Shadow of the Moon (66 page)

The last months had been full of anxiety and strain and infuriating frustration for Alex, and his recent interview with Mr Barton had driven him dangerously near to breaking point. To be dragged from his district, at a time like this, to explain a wholly justified action taken against a wealthy and dissolute nobleman who had only escaped his just deserts in the past on account of bribes paid to the Commissioner, was beyond bearing. Yet he had set his teeth and borne it, and as a result had arrived at the Residency that evening in no very amiable frame of mind. He had, for the moment, quite genuinely meant what he said when he told Sir Henry Lawrence that he would accept any post that would allow him to return to regimental duty, and he had been seriously considering sending Mr Barton his resignation. But ten minutes of Lawrence's society had been enough to restore a sense of proportion and sanity. Perhaps that was why men as remarkable and as different as Nicholson and Hodson could regard Sir Henry with so much respect and affection, and why, when he had left the Punjab, thousands had come to bid him farewell and to follow him for many miles as though loath to see the last of him.

‘Of course I shall see him again!' thought Alex. ‘He is not an old man. He is barely fifty …' But in spite of the windless warmth of the night he shivered as though he were cold, and could not rid himself of a sense of foreboding.

It was late, and in a few hours' time he would have to start for Lunjore again. He knew that he should get what sleep he could, but he had seldom felt less like sleeping. The house was hot and it was too warm even in the shadows of the verandah, but the garden looked cool and inviting. Alex walked the length of the verandah and went down a shallow flight of steps and out into the quiet moonlight.

Although it was almost mid-April the night was fresh and cool, for the hot weather was unusually late that year and it might well have been early March,
so green and pleasant were the grass and the flowering trees. The roses were colourless in the milky light, but the late-blooming orange blossom and foaming masses of jasmine were star-white, and the night air was sweet with the scent of flowers and lately watered earth.

Alex strolled across the wide lawns, his footsteps inaudible on the grass that the gardeners had watered at sunset, and came by chance to a group of flame trees whose shadows lay velvet-black in the moonlight.

There was someone standing at the far edge of that belt of soft darkness, her wide, pale skirts luminous in the shadows, and despite the fact that her outline was barely distinguishable and that she had her back to him, he knew that it was Winter. He stopped, and would have turned back except that something in the pose of the dimly seen figure arrested his attention. She was watching something, and there was a suggestion of alertness in the tilt of her head that even the deep shadows could not disguise. Curiosity overcame discretion and he went forward and came to stand beside her.

She heard the quiet footsteps and turned her head, but she made no movement of surprise or alarm and seemed as instantly aware of his identity as he had been of hers. She might almost have been waiting for him, though for once she had not even been thinking of him. But it seemed entirely natural to her that he should be there. The warm stillness of the garden was another world which had nothing in common with the turmoil and tensions and restlessness that were a part of the daylight hours. She accepted his presence as a matter of course, and turned back to her contemplation of the stretch of gardens beyond the trees, as though her interest in what lay there had absorbed her attention to the exclusion of all else.

Standing beside her Alex could see the pale outline of her profile against the massed darkness of the leaves, and smell the clean, cool scent of lavender that he had come to associate with her. As his eyes became accustomed to the shadows he could make out the curving line of the long lashes, the faint, puzzled crease between her brows and a stray tendril of black hair that curled childishly above her ear.

Winter did not appear to be aware of his gaze and presently she inquired in a whisper: ‘What are they doing?'

Alex looked away from her, and for the first time became aware of what it was that had caught her interest. There were things moving across the open ground between the sharp-edged shadows of buildings that lay within the precincts of the Residency: things that moved in complete silence, keeping for the most part to the shadows and flitting noiselessly across the moonlit spaces like a frieze of trolls; bowed, hunchbacked and grotesque, silhouetted briefly against the silver-washed grass or the wall of a house; lost again in shadow and emerging only to be swallowed up by the ground.

It took him a moment or two to realize that they were men carrying heavy loads, shouldering sacks or bent under weighted boxes, and stowing them away in the underground cellars that lay beneath some of the Residency
buildings. He said lightly enough: ‘They are only men laying in supplies for the summer. Grain and—'

‘And ammunition,' finished Winter. ‘Why? And why are they doing it by night? George Lawrence was there a little while ago. I saw him. He said he was going to bed, but he came out here to see that there was no one about. They were doing it last night too. And the night before. They cannot need so many supplies unless … unless they think this place will be besieged. Is it that?'

Alex did not answer the question. He said instead: ‘Why have you come out here to watch them every night?'

‘I haven't. I mean, I did not come out to watch them. I only came out to walk in the garden.'

‘At this time of night? It's very late.'

‘I could not sleep, and this gave me something else to think about,' said Winter simply. ‘Is there really going to be a rising? Ameera says—'

She stopped and after a moment Alex said: ‘What does Ameera say? And who is Ameera?'

Winter turned to look at him in surprise. It seemed incredible to her that Alex should not know about Ameera. Until she remembered that she had barely seen him, and then only at a distance, for almost three months after her marriage, and that he did not even know the story of how she had come to Lunjore. She told him something of it now, and of Juanita and Aziza Begum and the Gulab Mahal; standing among the scented shadows of a garden that overlooked the teeming city of Lucknow and the house in which she had been born.

It had been April when Marcos de Ballesteros, riding out through the gateway of the Gulab Mahal, had turned in the saddle to see Sabrina standing among the hard-fretted shadows of the gold-mohur trees, and had not known that he was seeing her for the last time. Eighteen years ago. And now it was April again, and Sabrina's daughter told that tale as it had been told to her by Zobeida …

‘We never knew what had become of them - Aziza Begum and my Aunt Juanita and the others,' said Winter in conclusion. ‘The letters stopped. That was all. I did not even know if Ameera was alive; or anyone I had known.'

She was silent for a time and then she said slowly: ‘I think Ameera is afraid. Her husband does not like the British, and I think - I think he does not trust her because of her Western blood. She will not let me go to the Gulab Mahal, and I have only seen her twice. She says it is not easy for her to see me, and I do not think her husband knows that she has done so. Perhaps he would punish her if he did. You don't think he would, do you? Jehan Khan told me that Nila Ram cut off his wife's hands because she disobeyed him—' Her voice had a sudden tremor of fear in it and she put out a hand and caught at Alex's sleeve: ‘Alex, you don't think he would do anything like that, do you?'

Alex looked down at the small hand on his arm and found himself unable to resist the impulse to cover it with his own. His touch appeared to startle her, for he felt the slim fingers stiffen and become quite still under the light clasp of his own. They withdrew gently and without haste, but her unconscious acceptance of his presence was gone and the ease between them was broken.

Alex said in a matter-of-fact voice: ‘No, I don't. I expect you would find that Nila Ram's wife was conducting a clandestine affair. To visit a first cousin, even if that cousin is a European, is hardly a major offence. Does she seem to think there is any danger of an armed rising?'

Winter shook her head. ‘She said that the city was full of strange rumours, but she would not say what they were. Only - only she said that I must go to the hills, and not stay in Lunjore.'

Alex said drily: ‘I seem to remember saying that myself.'

‘I know you did. But there are twenty or more other women in Lunjore, and—' She broke off abruptly, wishing that she had not spoken. The inference was so obvious, and what did she expect Alex to say? That she was the only one whose safety he cared about? She drew back from him involuntarily, feeling the hot colour flood up and burn in her cheeks, and grateful for the darkness that would conceal it. But Alex's voice was clipped and cool:

‘I am aware of it. And if I had the authority to do so, I would have every one of you sent to the nearest hill station where there are British troops while there is still time. Not for your safety, but for ours.'

‘For yours?' said Winter uncertainly. ‘I don't understand—'

‘Don't you? I should have thought it was obvious,' said Alex brutally. ‘Because men are sentimental over women they will throw away military advantages, and hesitate and weigh the chances of failure when attack is their best or only hope, and lose their opportunity because they “have to think of the women and children”. Men who would not otherwise dream of surrendering will make terms with an enemy in return for the safety of a handful of women. If a man is killed, it is an accident of war; but if a woman or a child is killed it is a barbarous murder and a hundred lives - or a thousand - are sacrificed to avenge it. It is only a man like John Nicholson who has the courage to write, and mean it, that the safety of “women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all”. If only more men thought like that you could all stay in Lunjore and be damned to you!'

There was exasperation and bitterness in his voice, as though some prophetic vision of the future had risen before him in all its tragic futility. And then a dry leaf crunched behind them and he turned quickly to see George Lawrence standing beyond the rim of the tree shadows.

‘Who is it?' George Lawrence spoke softly but sharply, and as Alex moved out of the shadows he said with undisguised relief: ‘Oh, it's you, Alex. I thought—' He checked at the sight of Winter. ‘Mrs Barton!'

His eyebrows twitched together in a sudden frown and Winter said: ‘I'm sorry, Mr Lawrence. Did we startle you? I came down to walk in the garden because I couldn't sleep, and Captain Randall found me here.'

The Chief Commissioner's nephew cleared his throat in nervous embarrassment and shot a quick look at Alex that needed no interpretation.

Alex grinned a little maliciously and said: ‘No such luck,' as though in answer to a spoken question.

The moonlight did not disguise the dark colour that showed briefly in George Lawrence's face. He said sharply: ‘I did not for a moment suppose—' and checked again, and then said abruptly and as though Winter were not there: ‘How much has she seen?'

‘Quite enough,' said Alex laconically. ‘But she won't talk.'

George Lawrence turned to look at Winter and she answered an unspoken question as Alex had done: ‘I promise. I didn't mean to spy on you, and I won't speak of it to anyone. Word of honour.' She smiled at him and his set face relaxed in an answering smile.

‘Thank you. It is not a thing that my uncle would wish to become generally known. It is only a precautionary measure, you understand, but if it were to be talked about it might give rise to panic at a time when it is essential to give the appearance of calm.'

He turned to Alex and said a little stiffly: ‘I thought that you were intending to make a five o'clock start, Alex? It is near one o'clock already. Had you not better be getting some sleep? I will see Mrs Barton to her room.'

Alex regarded him with a good deal of sardonic comprehension in his gaze. So George considered that he had been gravely imperilling young Mrs Barton's reputation by being found talking to her in the garden at one o'clock in the morning, did he? He wondered what impression would be gained by anyone who might happen to see Mr Lawrence escorting Mrs Barton to her bedroom at that hour. George would not have thought of that! He said gravely: ‘I am sure I could leave her in no better hands. Good night, Mrs Barton. Good-bye, George. I hear you return to Sikora soon? Good luck to you.'

‘Thank you,' said George Lawrence soberly. ‘I may need it.'

Alex lifted his hand in a brief gesture of farewell, and turning on his heel walked away across the moonlit lawn and was swallowed up by the foreshortened shadow of the Residency tower.

34

The Dalys had left shortly after twelve o'clock on the following day, and an hour after their departure Winter drove back in Sir Henry's barouche to the Casa de Ballesteros.

Her husband, she was informed, was still abed. There had been a party last night; not a large one, half a dozen sahibs in all. But they had stayed until the small hours.

Despite the lateness of the season, every door and window in the big drawing-room stood wide, but the hot air of mid-day and the scent of fresh-cut flowers could not disguise the stale reek of cigar-smoke, spilled brandy and another smell that reminded Winter of Hazrat Bagh. There was also something in the room that had not been there before: a large square of faded velvet that she recognized as a bedspread from one of the upstairs rooms had been hung neatly over Velasquez's portrait of Don Cristobal de Ballesteros.

Winter looked at it, puzzled and frowning, and sent for old Muddeh Khan, the head bearer. Muddeh Khan had looked unhappy and had avoided her eye. The Huzoors, he explained apologetically, had been in a merry mood and had damaged the portrait somewhat in sport. He would have removed it, save that the wall also—

Winter dismissed him, and when he had gone she crossed to the portrait and pulled away the square of olive-green velvet, and knew why the smell in the room had reminded her of Hazrat Bagh. Conway and his guests had used the vast painting as a target, and the dark beauty of the magnificent canvas was spattered with bullet holes which had smashed through it and broken and pitted the wall at its back. The haughty, hollow-cheeked Spanish face with its faint suggestion of scornful amusement was a mess of ruined canvas, and there was nothing left of the portrait that was worth repairing.

Looking at it, Winter was dragged down without warning into helpless rage. That he could do this to her father's house! to Pavos Reales! That he should bring his coarse, drunken friends and his cheap, loud women to this beautiful, silent house and vulgarize it as he had done last night!

She turned and walked out of the house and down to the river terrace; hatless in the hot sunlight and shivering with shock and anger and disgust as she had shivered on the morning that had followed the nightmare of her wedding.

‘I can't bear it!' thought Winter, staring out across the wide reaches of the river with eyes that only saw the senseless ruin of that magnificent canvas. ‘I can't bear it …!' Yet what was she to do? Neither Church nor Law
would release her, and she remembered again what Mrs Gardener-Smith had told her. That the law would be on Conway's side.

‘I will go to the hills,' thought Winter. ‘At once - today! That should at least please Alex. Or … or will it? No, not please him. He does not want me to go because I am I, but because I am merely one of all the women he would like to be rid of so that we cannot get in the way of military decisions if there is a crisis. Alex thinks that there is going to be a crisis. And so does Sir Henry, or he would not be taking all those precautions. Ameera does too - or is it only that she is frightened of her husband? or
for
him?' What was it Alex had said? or Nicholson had said? …
‘women … in some crises are such a very minor consideration that they cease to be a consideration at all
'.

Quite suddenly her anger and despair fell away from her, for if a crisis was indeed brewing in India her own difficulties were trivial, and she could not, at this juncture, add to the problems and anxieties that the times were laying upon the shoulders of all men by creating a public scandal in Lunjore and Lucknow. Conway intended to return to Lunjore at the end of the month, and she would go with him and arrange to leave for Simla or Naini Tal towards the middle of May. That at least could create no scandal, and Conway could not very well refuse to let her go. She must do nothing until then; except the hardest thing of all. To wait …

It was mid-afternoon and the quietest time of the day. Few went abroad while the sun sucked the moisture from the earth and the marrow from men's bones, and all who could do so lay still in the shade and waited for the cool of the evening. The river and the stone-flagged terrace lay empty in the sun-glare, and the far bank was deserted. A mile or so upstream the city shimmered in the heat-haze, and there was no cloud in the sky and nothing moved except the soundless river and a solitary boat that drifted down with the stream.

It was a flat-bottomed country boat with a matting roof curved above it to keep out the sun, poled by an ancient rheumy-eyed man in the scanty garb of a fisherman, and it drifted closer and closer into the bank until it bumped gently against the stone wall of the river terrace and its prow grated on the water-steps. It was a small enough sound but astonishingly loud in the hot, silent stillness of the afternoon, and Winter moved to the balustrade and looked down.

A woman's partially veiled face peered out from beneath the matting screen and looked cautiously up and down the empty reaches of the river, eyes narrowed against the sun-glare, and then glancing upwards, saw Winter. The eyes widened suddenly and a dark claw-like hand beckoned. There was something so furtive and yet so urgent in that gesture that Winter turned involuntarily to look behind her. But the terrace and the park beyond it were deserted, and not even a butterfly moved in the blinding sunlight.

She went quickly to the water-steps, holding her wide skirts clear of the hot flagstones, but at the top of them she hesitated for a moment. There was
no one within sight or call, and she did not know who was in the boat. The hand beckoned again imperiously and Winter descended the steps slowly and stooped to peer under the shadows of the curved matting. The face that looked up at her dropped its
chuddah
for a brief moment. It was Hamida.

Winter gathered up her skirts and holding them about her scrambled into the darkness of the tent-like enclosure. There was a clink of silver bracelets and a scent of attar-of-roses, and a soft, slender hand that was not Hamida's stretched out of the gloom and caught her bare arm.

‘Ameera! Is it thou?'

‘It is I,
querida
—' Ameera spoke in halting Spanish. ‘Luck is indeed with me, for I did not think to find you here. Hamida was to fetch you from the house. I came at this time because I knew that there would be few abroad at such an hour, and I cannot stay long.'

She spoke with a soft, breathless haste that made Winter say sharply: ‘What is it? What has happened?'

‘Nothing. Nothing as yet. But I cannot come to see you again. It is not safe, either for you or for me. And if it were known that I have come now—'

The sentence broke off into a shiver and all at once the hot dimness of the little matting shelter, the bright stillness of the land and the wide, slow-flowing river were full of fear, and even the sly chuckle of the water under the wooden boat seemed a sound full of menace.

Winter took Ameera's hand between her own small cool palms and held it tightly. ‘Tell me what has happened.'

Ameera sank her voice to a whisper: ‘I must not come again, but I could not - I did not dare send word for fear that it would not reach you, or that you would not believe. You must go,
querida
. Quickly! Very quickly. There is danger here for all of your blood. No, not in Lucknow only, or in Oudh, but in all India. I have heard …. things. Things I dare not tell you. But it is true what I say. Only yesterday there was found a proclamation posted by the gate of the Jumma Masjid in Delhi, saying that the Shah-in-Roos (the Tsar) would send an army that would sweep all the British into the sea and—'

‘
Yesterday
?' said Winter. ‘How can you know that? It is two hundred miles and more to Delhi.'

‘There are ways,' whispered Ameera. ‘Ill news travels swiftly, and there is much ill news; therefore I come to tell you that you must not go to the hills but to the sea, and take ship and return at once to your own country.'

‘This is my country.'

‘It is not - it is
not
!' said Ameera passionately. ‘I am of this land, but you are not! But for love of you, because we two played together as children and because your father was brother to my mother, I betray my countrymen by warning you to go.'

Winter said slowly: ‘Dear, you must tell me more. I cannot go just for this. I - I am married. There is my husband - can you not tell me—'

‘I can tell you nothing -
nothing
! Already I have said too much. I also love my husband, though his heart is turned away from me because of my mother's blood that runs in my veins - do you think I would not rid myself of it if I could, for his sake? He will turn to me again, of that I am sure. How could I live if it were not so? But men are not as we are. For us, they are all of life. But for them love is but a small part of living, forgotten when the kissing is done. My husband thinks first of his own people and his own Padishah and of his own wrongs. If he knew that I had told you aught, he would kill me - even me, who am the mother of his sons, and whom he loves.'

Winter's eyes, accustomed now to the gloom after the sun-glare of the terrace, could see that Ameera's face was drawn and haggard with fear and anxiety, and that the same fear was on Hamida's face too. But she had to know more. She had to know
when
, but there was little trace of the West in Ameera who had once been ‘Anne Marie'; her love and her loyalty lay with her husband's people, and she would not tell more than she must …

Winter said carefully, trying to keep the urgency from her voice: ‘I will try to go, but it will not be easy to leave soon. We do not return to Lunjore until the end of this month, and I had planned to go to the hills by mid-May.'

Ameera said: ‘
No
! not to the hills! To England. Even the hills may not be safe.'

‘It will take three weeks to reach Calcutta,' said Winter slowly.

‘That I know. Did I not say that you must leave at once? Before the first week of May is out.'

Winter's fingers released the slim hand she held, and she said as though frightened: ‘But is it safe to travel? If there is danger, would it not be safer to stay where there are regiments?'

‘No harm will come to you before the last day of May. But after that there will be no safety anywhere - least of all where there are regiments! You will go? Promise me you will go.'

Winter drew a long breath and found that the palms of her hands were wet: a wetness that had nothing to do with the airless heat of the small boat. She had got what she wanted. She leant forward and kissed Ameera swiftly: ‘I will try,
querida
. But if my - my husband will not go, then I cannot.'

‘Then go to the hills. It may serve … I do not know. And now I must go. Already I have stayed overlong. Good-bye,
querida
—' She lapsed into Hindustani: ‘Farewell, Little Pearl. Do not forget me. I will make prayer to my God and to Bibi Miriam (the Virgin Mary) also, who was a woman and may hear me, for thy sake and thy safety.' The tears were running down her cheeks and she clung to Winter for a moment and then tore herself free and thrust her away. ‘Go now - go quickly! It is late. Hamida, tell the
manji
to make haste!'

Winter stood on the water-steps in the hard sunlight and saw the old man thrust off with his pole, backing the narrow boat into the stream. She raised
her hand in farewell, and then the boat had swung and the old
manji
was poling it away upstream towards the city.

The little ripples lapped and hissed softly against the hot stone steps, and Winter watched the small boat through a mist of tears until the sun-dazzle on the water blotted it out. Something moved on the terrace above her and she whirled about, her heart in her throat. But it was only a peacock rustling his splendid tail along the flagstones.

Her sudden movement and the swish of her hooped skirts startled the bird, and lifting his tail clear of the ground he scuttled for the shelter of the bamboos with undignified haste. But the momentary panic he had caused her served to remind Winter - if she had needed reminding - that Ameera had risked her life to bring that warning. It was a horrible thought, and it sent a small, icy prickle of fear down Winter's spine. She shivered in the afternoon heat and turned back again to the river, peering under the palm of her hand. But the boat had gone and the river ran quiet and undisturbed from bank to bank and nothing moved upon it save a corpse that drifted down on the stream turning lazily with the current, and a slow-moving mud-turtle who crawled up out of the water to bask with his basking fellows on the edge of a sand bar.