by Olivia Drake
“There is no proven preventive for dysentery,” the doctor said. “But I believe a teaspoon of castor oil taken once a day will help keep you and your wife healthy. The boy, of course, won’t need any so long as he’s drinking only his mother’s milk.”
His coolness rankled Damien. Not for his own sake; over the years he’d learned to let undercurrents of censure roll off his tough hide. But he’d make bloody well certain that people treated his wife and child with respect.
“You don’t approve of me marrying a native woman.”
Reginald arched one fair eyebrow. “It isn’t my place to approve or disapprove, Mr. Coleridge.”
“But you do disapprove. I’ve ignored the class distinction between the races, between sahib and slave.”
The doctor made a show of locking the cabinet and pocketing the key. Then he sat on the edge of his desk and tilted his neatly groomed head in a thoughtful pose. “Since you’re being so frank, yes, I suppose what you say is true. You speak in favor of the Hindu cause. You garb yourself like a native. It seems you respect the Indians more than your own people.”
Damien felt goaded into saying, “The Hindus are my people, and they’re yours, too, if only you could see it. The Brits are wrong to set themselves up as superior beings.”
“Come, now.” Smiling, Reginald shook his head. “Someone must be the master. Someone must make the rules, else we’d have chaos.”
“Heaven forbid the English should suffer chaos while invading another country.”
“We bring civilization to the primitive peoples of the world.”
Damien tightened his fingers around the medicine bottle. “The Indians have had a civilized culture since long before our ancestors were warring barbarians.’
Reginald snorted as he got up to light a lamp against the encroaching dusk. “That depends on what you call civilized. Suttee—a widow who’s expected to throw herself onto a burning funeral pyre? Thugs strangling innocent travelers to satisfy the bloodlust of Kali?” He blew out the match and tossed it into a brass dish. “Or how about the polygamists who take more than one wife? Surely even you cannot endorse such practices.”
“Some of their customs might seem peculiar, even savage,” Damien conceded. “Yet the Indians might view us as odd, too. We condemn our children to die in filthy workhouses. We force men to labor fourteen-hour shifts in the bowels of coal mines. And, of course, we profess to believe in only one God instead of a host of remarkable deities.”
“Remarkable?” Folding his arms, Reginald sank back onto the edge of the desk. “I’m afraid I cannot share your views.”
In his tropical white garb he looked like a complacent snow leopard. And a leopard can’t change its spots, Damien reflected.
This was the man who would marry Sarah Faulkner.
Damien wondered why the thought disturbed him. She and Reginald were a matched pair, both blond and handsome, both with that typical British bearing of valor and self-righteousness. They differed only in that Sarah Faulkner professed empathy for the natives. A spark of anger smoldered inside Damien. Her open-mindedness was a sham; that must be why she bothered him so. He burned with the memory of the moment at church yesterday when she’d turned her back on Shivina and Kit.
He couldn’t abide a hypocrite.
“At least you’re honest,” Damien told the doctor. “I’ll give you that much.”
He stuck the bottle in his pocket and offered his hand. As Reginald rose to shake hands, he frowned.
“I say, if you’ll excuse my professional interest, you’ve quite a lot of old scar tissue. You must have suffered terrible burns. A long time ago?”
The familiar wall reared inside Damien. He stepped back. “I was five.”
“Such extensive burns can be crippling. Yet you appear to have regained full use of your hands.”
A lightning bolt of memory struck Damien...the painful times of opening and closing his fingers to stretch the puckered skin, the agony of grasping a pencil again, the torture of learning to draw. His determination to become whole again had been buoyed by the futile hope of winning his mother’s forgiveness.
In a chilly voice that invited no more questions, he said, “I simply exercised my hands. It was successful, but I don’t recommend it.”
“I did my medical training at the Royal College of Physicians in London. Perhaps I knew your doctor.”
“I doubt it. He retired nearly twenty years ago.”
“A shame. I’d have enjoyed corresponding with him.” A pensive look came over Reginald’s face. “I wonder if other burned children might follow a similar therapy regimen. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind describing in more detail how you—”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Damien broke in. “I’m leaving Meerut before dawn tomorrow, and I’ve preparations to make yet.”
“Of course. How stupid of me. I haven’t the time now anyway, else I should be late for the evening service—” Reginald paused and cocked his head. “I say, what’s that?”
The stamp of running feet sounded outside and then came closer, into the bungalow. A tall Hindu bearer, the tail of his green turban dangling down his back, burst into the room.
“Sahib-doctor,” he said, panting, “you must come quickly. To the infantry lines.”
“What is it?” asked Reginald, already reaching for his black medical bag.
“The native regiments have arisen. Much fighting, many wounded.”
The news hit Damien like a nasty fall. He swore under his breath. “Get us mounts, and quickly,” he told the servant, then sprang out the door.
Racing to the veranda rail, he peered toward the cantonments. Against the evening sky, clouds of smoke billowed from the blazing barracks. The distant crackle of musketry fire drifted from the infantry lines and the parade ground.
“My son.” The words leaped from Damien.
Reginald joined him. “Good God,” he breathed. “Ali Khan must be mistaken. They can’t have mutinied.”
Damien glanced at the doctor’s ashen face. “What do you think they’re doing, having a barbecue?” he snapped. “I’m as much a bloody fool as you for not seeing this would happen so soon.”
Reginald only pursed his lips and began pacing.
The bearer came running toward the veranda, holding the reins of a bay charger. A syce hastened after him, leading a black horse.
Damien dashed down the steps and flung himself onto the black. Reginald fastened his bag to the bay’s saddle, mounted, and turned his horse toward the cantonments.
“If you’ll excuse me, old chap—”
“Damn your English manners,” Damien cut in savagely. “I’m going back to the caravan, so I may as well ride along with you.”
“As you like.”
The doctor took off at a gallop, dust flying. Following, Damien crouched low over the ebony mane. Fear sparked his fury, a fury aimed more at himself than anyone else. God! He should have obeyed the warning of his instincts. He should have left Meerut days ago. He shouldn’t have softened to Shivina’s plea to delay until after Kit’s christening. But she asked him for so little.
Dread tortured his heart. If anything happened to either of them... All of his adult life he’d resisted entangling himself with other people. Commitment sucked a man into a quicksand of emotional dependence. A quicksand that smothered him in a slow, painful death.
Damn! If he got his family out of here alive, he’d never leave himself vulnerable again.
The fastest route back to the caravan lay through the cantonments, where tongues of flame licked at the thatched roofs of barracks. Throngs of infantrymen danced in wild jubilation. Men shot muskets into the air, weapons stolen from slain English officers whose mutilated bodies scattered the ground.
Beside Reginald, Damien reined to a halt in the shadows a short distance from the regimental magazine. More than a hundred sowars, sepoys, and badmashes milled around the stone building. The threat of violence hung as acrid as the smoke in the evening sky.<
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“God help us,” muttered Damien, “if the riffraff of the bazaar get their hands on more guns.”
“I must restore order.”
He swung his gaze to the doctor. “Don’t be a damned fool, Reggie. One man doesn’t hold a prayer against so many. Besides, you’re needed at the hospital.”
“Fewer guns will mean fewer casualties.”
Resolution hardened Reginald’s face. Damien bleakly conceded the battle of dissuading the doctor. There was no arguing with an Englishman blinded by duty.
Reginald’s bulldog valor plunged Damien into one hell of a dilemma. Unless he distanced himself fast.
“Curse your bloody heroics,” he said. “I won’t be dragged into this. I’m getting the hell out of here.”
He wheeled the black around and galloped off.
Reginald watched horse and rider vanish into the night. Curiously, he felt a glimmer of understanding for Damien Coleridge. At least the odd fellow lived his beliefs to the letter. Might have guessed he’d desert rather than fight his precious Indians.
Which left Reginald in a frightful pickle.
He swallowed, tasting dust and gunpowder. Never had he felt more utterly alone. Madness inflamed the faces of the rebels. Teeth bared like tigers, they exhorted each other to break open the magazine. If ever he’d wondered what the devil looked like, now he knew.
Steeling his nerves, he rode toward the mob and stopped a few yards away. As one, the multitude swung toward him.
“Lay down your arms,” he called out in English. “Disperse yourselves immediately.”
Jeers and catcalls flew at him. “By whose order?” a turncoat sepoy shouted. “You are no longer our master, feringhi!’’
A roar of agreement rose to the inferno-lit sky. Like the swell pushed ahead of a typhoon, the crowd surged toward Reginald.
Palms sweaty, he gripped the reins and kept his face calm. “In the name of the Queen, lay down your arms now and your punishment will be fair.”
“As fair as the punishment you gave our brothers?” yelled a cavalryman. “You treated them like sons of snakes.”
“Remember our brothers!” Enraged voices took up the chant, a chant Reginald understood despite his rusty Hindi. “Our brothers, our brothers!”
Saber upraised, a bearded Mohammedan in a blood-splashed shirt pushed to the front of the mob. “Kill the infidel!”
“Maro!” someone else bellowed. “Kill him!”
A musket ball whizzed past Reginald’s ear. The frightened horse reared. Sawing at the reins, he fought to restrain the bay.
A knife-wielding sepoy charged. Iron-shod hooves slashed down onto the man. He fell backward, his arms wheeling, his mouth open in a scream.
“More guns,” yelled a flat-nosed badmash. “We must seize the feringhi guns!”
In a frenzied hubbub, half the crowd turned to storm the magazine. Within moments they battered down the door. Men grabbed the arms and ammunition.
“Stop, I say,” Reginald cried out. “You must cease this madness at once!”
His order was lost to the hullabaloo. Everywhere, sepoys and badmashes crouched to load their pilfered muskets. The men were beyond control. A bleak thought flashed in his mind: he should have left with Damien Coleridge.
Yet Reginald knew he could have followed no other course.
“Maro! Maro!”
Wild shots exploded all around. Eyes rolling, the bay danced and snorted. A mutineer toppled, felled by a stray bullet, a bloodied hole in his chest.
Knowing he hadn’t a second to lose, Reginald jerked his horse around. Hands caught at the reins, his trouser legs. Someone ripped his medical bag from the saddle. With his fist, he knocked away a club and then chopped at grasping fingers.
A grinning ruffian lunged out of the confusion. Howling a curse, he slashed his tulwar downward. Even as Reginald snapped the reins free, numbness burned into his thigh.
The horse bolted. Warm wetness soaked Reginald’s leg. Through the darkness he saw that his thigh was opened at a diagonal angle, neat as a surgeon’s cut. Blood pumped sluggishly from the wound. Judging by the rate of the flow, he realized the sword slice must have nicked an artery.
His only hope was to head for the British infantry lines beyond the parade ground.
Gunfire cracked from behind. Angry howls chased him. He was nearing the cantonment wall when the bay squealed suddenly and stumbled. The reins jerked from his grasp and he flew from the saddle. Wind and firelight rushed past. He hit the earth with a bone-jarring thump.
Agony burst like flames down the length of his body. Each breath seared his throat. The pain crawled downward, settling its fiery claws in his thigh.
With clinical detachment he knew he would die within minutes—if not from blood loss, then at the hands of the insurgents.
Yet the will to live burned stronger than any pain.
Fighting for breath, Reginald spared a glance toward the magazine. Doubtless they’d seen him tumble. From his vantage point he couldn’t spot the men, but already their inhuman screeches sounded nearer.
He dragged himself away from the fallen horse and into the shadow of the wall. There he wriggled upright. Removing one of his suspenders, he struggled to tie a tourniquet around his upper thigh. The bleeding slowed to a warm trickle. Hands shaking, he leaned dizzily back against the cool wall.
Sarah, he thought in sudden anguish. Are you safe? I’ll never live to know...
The chanting of the mob grew closer. Gunfire popped. Now he could see the glow of their flaming brands, could hear their crazed curses and the tramp of their footsteps. In a matter of moments, they would find him.
He knew his pockets were empty, yet he fumbled laboriously inside them anyway. Drat. If only he possessed a weapon.
But he was a healer, not a killer.
He closed his eyes and said a prayer. He tried to conjure an image of Sarah. Somehow her lovely features slipped away like the blood soaking into the dusty ground.
His mind drifted upward, leaving bodily torment behind, soaring like a kite upon a gust of wind.
I should have listened to you, Sarah. You were right about the natives. You and Damien Coleridge.
Something hard clamped onto his arm and yanked him back to earth. A voice buzzed like an angry hornet in his ear.
“Get up, damn you.”
He felt himself being hauled to his feet. Pain seared his leg. Panting, he staggered back against the wall. A face swam before him. A man’s face, swarthy as a native’s but with the square-cut features of an Englishman.
Damien Coleridge.
Reginald blinked. His dazed mind must be playing tricks. “But...you came back—”
“Yes, and that makes me as much the bloody fool as you,” Damien snapped. “Now, are you going to loll about here like an offering to Kali?”
“My leg.”
“Damn your leg. It’s your throat you should worry about.”
And mine, Damien wanted to add. Bracing an arm around the doctor’s back, he helped the injured man hobble toward the black gelding tethered farther down along the wall. The mutineers were too damned close for comfort. Glancing over his shoulder, he could discern the frenzied faces of the leaders as they neared the fallen horse. If it weren’t for the concealing shadows, he and Reginald already would be fodder for the vultures.
Reginald gasped, “Right good of you, old man—”
“Just walk, for God’s sake. Walk.”
The throng milled around the bay. One of the ringleaders loosed a savage shriek and pointed at the two Englishmen. A crescendo rumbled from the rebels. Weapons raised, men darted toward them.
Damien growled, “Make that run!”
But Reginald slumped as if disoriented. Curing under his breath, Damien half carried the doctor the remaining few yards. The horse waited in the gloom, straining at its tether. Its eyes rolled wildly at the scents of smoke and blood.
The whoops and hollers of the mob swept closer. Muscles straining, Damien flun
g Reginald over the pommel. He jerked the reins from beneath a rock and leaped into the saddle. Even as his feet hit the stirrups, he spurred the black to a gallop.
A volley of shots snapped past. He crouched low and kept a tight hold on the wounded man. Reginald lay limp, unconscious, Damien hoped. It’d be the devil’s own luck if he’d risked his neck to rescue a dead man.
Slowly he pulled out of musket range, but tension still throbbed inside him. The horse blew hard under the exertion of its double load. He eased the animal into a trot along the back routes of Meerut, past flaming buildings and mangled
English bodies. As he forced himself past yet another fire, he felt cold sweat soak his tunic. The carnage sickened him. The city bore an uncanny resemblance to Hades, peopled by merciless demons.
For the first time in years he found himself whispering a fierce prayer: Dear God, protect Shivina. Protect my son.
Reaching the English infantry lines, he found mass confusion. Several officers called roll; others shouted orders. Soldiers ran in all directions, some men only half dressed. Dragoon guards sat mounted and waiting. Teams pulled out heavy artillery guns. In the midst of chaos, General Hewitt stood surrounded by subalterns and scratched his balding pate.
Why the hell hadn’t he sent out troops immediately to quell the violence? Damien wondered.
But the elderly commander’s incompetence was hardly his concern. All Damien wanted was to find his family and get the hell out of Meerut.
He dismounted near the hospital and signaled to a pair of bearers. As they loaded Reginald onto a canvas stretcher, he stirred and opened his eyes.
“You’re a noble chap after all,” he muttered. “Forgive me for misjudging...” He slumped back into unconsciousness.
Damien shrugged and hurried away. From the severity of the wound, he doubted the doctor would live. If the loss of blood didn’t kill him, gangrene or infection would.
So much for heroics.
He remounted and rode off into the night. Sporadic shooting sounded, and more than once he had to detour around a roving band of sepoys. As he neared the bazaar, smoke from burning buildings clogged the air and made him cough. A nauseating fear quaked inside him, a fear that drenched his palms in icy sweat. Oh, God, if Shivina and Kit were trapped in a fire...
