Shadow of the Moon (4 page)

‘Oh dear,' sighed Emily, ‘it is all going to be very difficult. I hope you may not find that you have made a sad mistake. You think now that this country is beautiful and romantic. But how are you going to like living all your days here? Heat, disease, wars, famines …'

‘I shall have Marcos,' said Sabrina.

Emily gave it up and waited with as much resignation as she could muster for the arrival of the mails from England that would bring her father's answer to the request for his blessing upon the marriage of his grand-daughter to Marcos de Ballesteros.

The new year dawned over Oudh in a blaze of saffron-yellow light. A new year that was to see the coronation of the young Queen Victoria, the Austrian evacuation of the Papal States, France declare war on Mexico, the abolition of slavery in India and the start of the disastrous Afghan War.

Beyond the borders of Oudh, in the Land of the Five Rivers, Ranjit Singh, the fabulous ‘Lion of the Punjab', held dissolute court in Lahore; plundering the hapless peasantry, meting out savage punishment to those who angered him and heaping wealth upon those who pleased, intriguing with the British and driving himself towards an early grave by a deliberate indulgence in drink and debauchery.

To the north, among the barren hills of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed the Amir, disappointed in his hopes of a treaty with the British, began to turn his thoughts towards Russia, while the British Emissary, Alexander Burns,
defeated by the stubborn stupidity of Lord Auckland from making an ally of Afghanistan, prepared to return empty-handed to India.

In the capital city of Oudh, Sabrina Grantham celebrated her twenty-second birthday with a picnic in a grove of trees upon the river bank, and a ball at the Casa de los Pavos Reales.

The gardens were hung with lanterns on the night of Sabrina's Birthday Ball and the great house was gay with music and laughter, a flutter of fans, the glitter of jewels and the clink of dress-swords. Sabrina wore a dress of white crêpe trimmed with gold embroidery, and a magnificent triple row of pearls that were a birthday gift from Anne Marie to her future daughter-in-law.

‘They were my mother's,' said Anne Marie, clasping the lustrous strands about Sabrina's white throat. ‘She had them from her mother on her wedding day, who had worn them at the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I have always meant them for Marcos's betrothed as a wedding gift, but I felt that I should like you to have them now - for your birth-night ball. You shall wear them at your wedding also, is it not so?'

But the year that had dawned for Sabrina with so much sunshine and happiness darkened swiftly. Anne Marie died in the first week of February. Perhaps it had been some premonition of the future that had decided her to give the pearls to Sabrina on her birthday instead of waiting until her wedding day.

As it must be in the East, the funeral took place within a few hours of Anne Marie's death; but to the Conde, although he was familiar with this abrupt disposal of the dead, the short space of time between his wife's death and her interment was particularly shocking. In Spain her body would have lain in state in the family chapel with candles flaring at the head and foot of the coffin while weeping mourners passed by, incense burned and priests sang masses for her soul, and only after several days would she have been carried in procession to her last resting-place in the family vault.

It did not seem right to Don Ramon that Anne Marie should be hurried thus to her grave, and when the rest of the household had retired to bed he took candles and flint and went by night to the little marble mausoleum he had built so many years ago to house the bodies of himself and his family. Five of his children already lay within it, and now Anne Marie had gone to join them.

No one heard him go save the night-watchman on guard outside the house, and him the Count beckoned to follow him, for he knew that he could not of his own frail strength open the heavy doors of the vault. The watchman, who saw nothing strange in this reverence to the dead, did not think to report it, and the ageing Count lit his candles and kept vigil all night beside the cumbersome lead coffin that contained the body of his wife. The night air had been warm and gentle, but the marble vault still held the chill of winter, and by morning he was shivering with cold and fatigue and unable to
walk the short distance that lay between the mausoleum and the house. He was carried to his bed and did not leave it again. The chill reached his lungs and he died on the third day, and by the same evening his body lay beside that of Anne Marie's in the marble mausoleum of the Casa de los Pavos Reales.

‘Now they are together again,' said Sabrina. She had wept for Anne Marie as though it had been her own and greatly beloved mother who had died. But her grief had been in part for the Count, lonely and bereft. Now that he too was dead she could not weep for him. She could only feel comforted. Somewhere, they were together again; not in the cold vault where the heaped flowers were already turning brown, but in some far and happy country of the spirit.

The brilliant days and cool nights of the late winter gave place to the warmer days of the Indian spring, and the days were hot and the nights pleasantly mild. It was more comfortable now to remain indoors, with the shutters closed against the glare, during the greater part of the day, and to go abroad only in the early mornings and the late afternoon.

The new fashions with their tight-fitting longer bodices, modest collars and full wide skirts suited Emily's taste, but with the approach of the hot weather she regretted the cooler and less formal draperies of the Directoire mode. Victorian England, in reaction from the laxity and licence of the preceding reigns, was already moving rapidly towards primness, and the gay high-waisted gowns and diaphanous materials of the earlier years of the century were giving place to more solid fabrics and a greater degree of sober respectability. Sir Ebenezer was still absent in Calcutta and the mails from England, though infrequent, never failed to bring a peremptory missive from the Earl of Ware commanding his grand-daughter's immediate return.

March brought with it a steadily rising temperature, dust-storms, and the monotonous, maddening call of the
köil
, whom the British had nicknamed the ‘brain-fever bird'. It also brought Sir Ebenezer Barton and the dispensation that Marcos had written for to Rome.

Sir Ebenezer found his wife looking sallow and careworn after the sorrows and anxieties of the past two months, and much in need of a change of air. Emily, he thought, not only appeared tired and ill but as though she had suddenly aged ten years. He was both alarmed and angry, and spoke sharply to Sabrina, whom he held solely responsible for her aunt's anxieties and indifferent health. He would, he said, arrange for an immediate removal to the cooler air of the hills, and this time there would be no nonsense as to Sabrina refusing to accompany them.

Sabrina, thus rudely awakened from her absorption in Marcos and his affairs, was stricken with remorse, for with the selfishness of those who are young and in love she had given little attention to her aunt's state of mind and health during the past months. Aunt Emily certainly did not look well;
the heat was making her unusually listless and a few months spent in the pine-scented air of the hills would undoubtedly improve her health and spirits. But Emily would not consent to leave Sabrina behind in Lucknow.

If Anne Marie had still been alive it would have been a different matter, as it would have been entirely suitable for Sabrina to stay in the house of her future mother-in-law. But now she could not stay at the Casa de los Pavos Reales, and Emily refused to consider Juanita's house as a suitable place for a young unmarried girl to remain for a visit of more than a few days at the most: ‘No, I have not forgotten that Juanita is Marcos's sister, and should you ever marry him' (Emily persisted in regarding it as a matter of doubt) ‘you will of course be able to make your own decisions on that score. But at present you are under my care and your uncle's protection and you must be guided by us.'

In this Juanita had unexpectedly - and most unfairly, thought Sabrina - supported Lady Emily.

‘You do not understand,
cariño
. Our menfolk do not think as yours on these matters. No, no - it is different for me. My mother and my husband's mother were friends before we were born, and my husband and I played together as children. I am of two worlds, but you are only of one.'

‘When I marry Marcos I shall be of two also,' said Sabrina, ‘England and Spain.'

Juanita shook her head. ‘When you marry Marcos you will still belong only to one: to the West. To Europe. I belong to the East also, for I was born in the women's quarters of an Indian palace - in this house of Aziza Begum's who was my mother's dear friend and is my husband's mother. But even were I to agree to your remaining here with me, my husband's mother would not permit it. Already she is troubled because my husband's uncle, Dasim Ali, follows you with his eyes and makes excuses to call upon his nephew my husband when he knows that you will be visiting here at the Gulab Mahal. Go to the hills, Sabrina
chérie
, and Marcos can visit you there. Soon a letter from the grandfather will come, and you will be married and all will be well.'

‘But Marcos cannot leave Lucknow,' said Sabrina forlornly. ‘There are so many things to be seen to. So much to be done. He could only get away for a few days, and I cannot bear to leave him.'

‘It will only be for a little while,' comforted Juanita. ‘Time goes swiftly.'

‘Not when you are unhappy,' said Sabrina, voicing the age-old discovery as though it were new.

A kinswoman residing in Lucknow, a Mrs Grantham, had already left for the cool of Simla, and although there were other British women in the city, Sabrina had never been intimate with any of them. They thought her charming, but were uneasy as to her association with the young Count from the Casa de los Pavos Reales, who was, after all was said and done, a Spaniard - a ‘foreigner', whose sister had married an Indian.

Many of the Company's men, exiled from their homeland for long years at a time, had admittedly taken Indian brides, and many more had contracted less permanent alliances. But the reverse was of rare occurrence and therefore tended to arouse considerable comment and hostility. The British matrons who, with their daughters, dined and danced and drank tea in company with Lady Emily Barton, would not be likely to welcome her niece for a prolonged visit, so it seemed that Sabrina would have no recourse but to leave for the hills with her aunt. But even as preparations for their departure were made, the question was decided otherwise.

On a hot evening towards the end of March, while a dry wind rattled the dying leaves of the bamboos and
neem
trees, and the pariah dogs of the city bayed a sultry yellow moon rising through the hot dusk, the letter they had been awaiting for so long arrived from England.

It was short and to the point. On no account whatsoever would the Earl of Ware consent to the marriage of his grand-daughter to this expatriate Spaniard who had settled in the East. He had no intention of allowing Sabrina to throw herself away on any man, however wealthy or well born, who was not only a foreigner but had made his home in such a barbarous and uncivilized spot. As for Emily and his son-in-law, to whose care he had entrusted his grand-daughter, the Earl could only think that they had gone out of their minds to entertain any thought of such a preposterous marriage Sabrina would return home instantly. In the event of her refusing to do so and of persisting in this outrageous folly, she would be cut out of his will and cut off from all future contact with him or his family. This was his final word upon the subject.

‘Well, that settles it I am afraid,' said Sir Ebenezer to his wife. ‘We will have to cancel our plans for your stay in the hills, and you, my love, will have instead to take Sabrina home: at least the voyage will benefit your health. I only wish that I could accompany you myself, but I am afraid that pressure of work forbids it.'

Emily, exhausted by the heat, the problems of packing and moving to the hills, anxiety on Sabrina's behalf and awe of her father, gave way to an unexpected attack of hysteria and took to her bed - she would not leave Ebenezer! Sabrina must of course return to Ware - had she not said so from the first? - but she herself refused to desert her husband in order to act as escort to her niece. Both Mrs Tolbooth and her daughter, and Sir Hugh and Lady Bryan, were shortly leaving for England, and she was persuaded that either family would be only too happy to undertake the care of Sabrina.

But Sabrina had no intention of being sent home to England in the care of Mrs Tolbooth, Sir Hugh and Lady Bryan, or indeed of anyone else. She had promised her aunt and uncle that she would wait until her grandfather's views on her marriage to Marcos de Ballesteros were made known, but she had not promised to abide by those views. Now that her grandfather's letter had arrived, offering her the choice of giving up Marcos or being cast
off and disinherited, there was no further need for delay. She could not stay with Juanita, and as Aunt Emily's health necessitated her removing to the cool of the hills, Sabrina solved the problem quite simply by marrying Marcos.

She would have liked Aunt Emily to be at her wedding, and dear Uncle Ebenezer too, but since she did not wish to involve them in any unpleasantness with her grandfather, she left a note pinned to her pincushion in the traditional manner, and slipping out of the house had her horse saddled and rode away to Marcos.

They were married in the little chapel of the Casa de los Pavos Reales in the presence of two young officers of the 41st Bengal Cavalry, friends of Marcos's on their way to rejoin their Regiment after a leave spent shooting in the
terai
, and of Juanita, who had been hurriedly summoned from her home in the city.

Sabrina wore a dress of Anne Marie's that she and Juanita had found stored away in a camphor-wood chest in Anne Marie's rooms, for she had brought nothing with her except the clothes she stood up in and the pearls that Marcos's mother had given her on the night of her Birthday Ball.