Shadow of the Moon (68 page)

It was dark by the time they reached the bungalow, and having taken a hot bath to remove the dust and sweat of the long ride, he changed into the white mess-jacket that was almost a uniform of the hot weather, and walked across in the starlight to the Residency.

The big house was ablaze with lights and there was a trap and a high dogcart standing on the wide drive. ‘Moulson again,' thought Alex, ‘and Gidney and Mottisham, I suppose.' He nodded to the
chowkidar
and went up the verandah steps. A servant lifted the
chik
before the hall door and murmured that the Huzoors were playing cards in the small
ghol-kumra
(drawing-room) and the Memsahib was in the big drawing-room.

Winter was sitting on a sofa in the centre of the room with the slow-moving punkah stirring the air above her. She had a book in her hands, but it was obvious that she had heard his voice in the hall. There was a suggestion of rigidity about her slight figure, and she was smiling. It was a pleasant smile; the smile an actress might have employed to indicate pleasurable surprise. But she was not as a rule, reflected Alex, walking leisurely towards her, much given to smiling, and it occurred to him to wonder if that smile was for his benefit or for Rassul, who had shown him in. Some instinct for danger made him return it, and as he took the hand that she held out to him he knew that he had been right, for her fingers were cold and not quite steady and they tightened warningly upon his for a moment before they were withdrawn.

She said gaily and on the same note of pleased surprise that was in her smile: ‘How kind of you to come so promptly! I hope it was not inconvenient? I was entrusted with a message from a friend of yours whom I met in Lucknow.' Her gaze went past him and she spoke to the servant who lingered by the door: ‘Bring drinks for the Sahib, Rassul.'

‘
Hukkum
,' murmured Rassul and the door closed softly behind him.

Winter said: ‘Do sit down, Captain Randall. Have you ridden far today? I am afraid my husband is busy just now. A card-party, you know. How
much English do these people understand? I did not expect to see you until tomorrow.' She laughed as though she had made some joke.

Alex's eyes narrowed suddenly but he replied without the least hesitation: ‘There was nothing much to keep me, and camping is hot work in this weather. A good deal more than most people would think.'

He saw Winter's quick breath of relief, and smiled. Had she really been afraid that he would misunderstand her and demand explanations? She threw an anxious glance at the two doors that opened onto the verandah.
Chiks
hung before both to keep the room from filling with bats and night-flying insects, but there were, he knew, at least three servants on the verandah. He shook his head very slightly, and the door behind him swung open silently and Rassul was back with a laden tray.

Winter said: ‘Yes, I thought it might be so. Mr - Brown wished to know if there was any good shooting to be had in Lunjore at this time of the year. He has a few weeks' leave soon and was considering coming here. I told him that I could not possibly say, but that you would write.'

Rassul poured out a drink and withdrew and Alex talked trivialities for a quarter of an hour by the drawing-room clock. Whatever it was that Winter wished to tell him, he had no intention of hearing it now. She had established her point, and no one listening to her voice and her light laugh could suspect her of having anything in the least disturbing on her mind. He finished his drink and rose: ‘I must say a few words to the Commissioner if you will excuse me. Do you ride tomorrow?'

‘Yes. A little before five. It is too hot now once the sun is up.'

Alex said: ‘You should ride by the river. It is cooler there. I expect I may see you. Good night, Mrs Barton.' He went into the small drawing-room that led off the larger one and was greeted ungraciously by the Commissioner, stayed to watch a hand of whist, and left.

There were no signs in the skies that night and the pariah dogs were silent; but the city was not. The city was awake and restless. Tom-toms throbbed and conches blared as they had in the little village beyond the tank and the mango-tope, and there were an unusual number of pedestrians upon the road that led past the Residency gateway from the cantonments to the city.

‘It is Ramadan,' said Niaz; but he said it uneasily, looking over his shoulder.

‘It is
dewanee
- the madness,' retorted Alex; and added as Niaz prepared to leave, ‘We ride before sunrise. Bring a gun.'

‘Which? Do we shoot partridge or
kala hirren
(blackbuck)?'

‘Pigeon,' said Alex briefly.

‘
Ah
!'

Alex turned swiftly at the tone. ‘Didst thou see, then?'

‘Nay. It was too far. But that
bairagi
(holy man) did not wish us to see the bird, and therefore he told it to go. Wherefore, I wondered—'

‘I too,' said Alex. He had seen such things done before, and it did not strike him as in the least impossible that the man could order a bird's departure without speech or movement. He had heard it said that even little silent Zeb-un-Nissa, Akbar Khan's grand-daughter, could do the same.

It was cool in the early light of the May morning, cooler than Alex ever remembered it to have been at this time of the year. May and June were normally burning months in the plains, but this May was not like others, and he could only regret it, since an early hot weather and soaring temperatures would have sent many women hurrying to the hills with their children, while this unusual mildness was causing them to linger and put off the day of separation.

The land and the river and the sky were all one colour in the dawn light: a clear, opalescent grey in which only the morning star still shivered as a challenging point of brightness. There was a faint swathe of mist smoking off the river, and a pair of sarus cranes cried harshly from among the crops as Alex and Niaz rode along the narrow, embanked roadway that curved across the plain.

Winter had ridden out by the wooden bridge that spanned the nullah behind the house, instead of by the main gateway. She saw the two horsemen far out on the plain ahead of her as she emerged from the thick belt of scrub and jungle that covered the far bank of the nullah and was an arm of the denser jungle that stretched away eastward, closing in upon the river bank three miles further down where the river joined the main stream that formed the boundary between Lunjore and Oudh. The distant horsemen were as small as marionettes, and though they appeared to be moving slowly, a long white cloud of dust behind them showed that their horses were at full gallop, and Winter threaded Furiante between the rough tussocks of grass where the narrow jungle track ran out onto the plain, and giving him his head, rode to cut them off before they reached the river bank. The exhilaration of speed and the rush of the morning air brought a glow of colour to her cheeks and she was laughing as she reined in beside a clump of three tall palm trees where Alex had pulled up to wait for her.

‘Good morning, Captain Randall. Have you brought that shotgun for more target practice?'

‘Perhaps,' said Alex, unsmiling. He wheeled his horse beside her and they moved off together parallel to the river bank, Niaz and Yusaf falling back out of earshot: ‘What is it that you wished to tell me?' Winter's face sobered and she threw a quick look over her shoulder. ‘It's all right. They can't hear, and it wouldn't matter if they did. What is it?'

‘It's something that Ameera said,' replied Winter, and she told him of that hot, still afternoon on the river terrace of Pavos Reales: of the little covered boat that had drifted in to the water-steps, and the thing that Ameera had told her in halting Spanish so that even Hamida should not know what it was that she had said.

Alex did not say any of the soothing and reassuring things that George Lawrence had said. He said nothing at all for a long time, riding beside her in silence and looking out over the brightening river through narrowed eyes.

So he had been right. A day and a date. He was sure that it must be so, for men like Kishan Prasad and the Maulvi of Faizabad would not content themselves with stirring up general discontent. That was an easy thing to do - too easy. And though sporadic outbreaks of mutiny and violence would embarrass the authorities, they could be dealt with and stamped out provided they were localized. It was a general mutiny of the Bengal Army, coupled with a popular rising, that was to be feared. And such a thing called for a day and a date …

The last day of May … and it was already the third. Three days gone. Twenty-seven left. Twenty-seven days in which to turn aside the wind that was rising steadily and blowing hot and fitfully through every cantonment in India. How did one stop a wind that had been whistled up by the blindness and obstinacy and egotism of men who imagined that it was a simple matter, and one worthy of all praise, to pry the East loose from its centuries-old laws and customs and force it into a Western mould?

‘I can do nothing about the regiments,' thought Alex, ‘but some of the talukdars will stand behind me - or at least stay quiet. And so I think will the villages. The city is the trouble. There are always
budmarshes
(scoundrels) by the score in the kennels of any city, and the scum of the bazaars and the back alleys will rise at a word simply for the chance of murder and loot … Will the police stand if the Army breaks? I must see Maynard again … Can I get Barton to demand plenary military powers in Lunjore that would give him the right to order the sepoys to be disarmed if their Colonels refuse to take action? I could always get him drunk enough to sign anything, and do the job myself. How does one prove to a set of courageous, pig-headed, devoted die-hards that their beloved men are listening nightly to treason? To suggest as much to a man like Gardener-Smith is almost on a par with telling him his wife is unfaithful to him. Worse if anything, as it deprives him of the satisfaction of knocking me down! “…
there will be no safety anywhere
;
least of all where there are regiments
.”'

Alex said abruptly: ‘Have you told anyone else?'

‘I told George Lawrence, but I don't think he believed me. No, I don't mean that - I mean he believed that Ameera had said it, but he thought that she was only repeating another bazaar rumour. Do
you
think that?'

‘I wish I did. But it fits in too well with my own view of the situation.' He relapsed into silence again, riding with a slack rein.

The land and the sky and the still river were no longer grey, but filled with a soft, luminous brilliance, and an almost visible shiver ran over the vast plain as the light lifted in the east. ‘The Wings of the Morning,' thought Winter, ‘it is like wings - invisible wings - or like someone running, with wings on their feet.'

A white egret flew slowly along the shallows, its reflection mirrored in the quiet water, and a line of dust showed where goats and cattle were being driven out to the grazing grounds. A flock of pigeons, dark against the brightening sky, swept up out of the distant city and circled upwards until their wings paled and shone to the sun that was still below the dusty horizon.

Alex reined in and dismounted swiftly, and Niaz cantered forward without a word and handed over the shotgun he carried as though he had received an order. A partridge called from a clump of dry grass:
Fakiri! Fakiri! Fakiri!
But neither Alex nor Niaz moved in its direction. They were watching the pigeons, and Winter, observing them with a puzzled frown, was startled by the look of grim concentration on the two faces. She turned to follow the direction of their intent gaze, and saw a single pigeon separate itself from the wheeling flock and fly towards them, but at an angle that took it across the river.

‘It is out of range,' muttered Niaz.

Alex nodded. He had not raised the gun and now he handed it back and Niaz received it, neither of them taking their eyes off the solitary bird as it dwindled into a speck against the immensity of the sky.

Winter would have asked a question, but Alex's face did not invite questions and she remained silent. He swung himself back into the saddle and they rode back down the river bank and across the plain at a gallop, and reached the outskirts of the cantonments as the first dazzling rim of the sun lipped the horizon.

There was plenty of traffic upon the cantonment roads, for the early mornings were by far the most pleasant (and would soon be the only possible times) in which to walk or ride. Today being Sunday the bells were ringing for the six o'clock service and there were a quantity of early church-goers to be seen driving along the shaded roads, and Alex abandoned his taciturnity and conversed with the utmost cordiality as though he had nothing in the least disturbing on his mind. He accompanied Winter to the Residency gates, acknowledged Akbar Khan's dignified salutation, and returned to his own bungalow for breakfast. He did not keep the Ramadan fast when within reach of his own kind.

Niaz, who had eaten before dawn, was sitting cross-legged on the verandah rolling a supply of cigarettes when he came out. He stood up, slapping the fallen tobacco from his clothes, and said as though continuing a conversation: ‘I will tell Amir Nath. I do not think he will talk. But it must be done on the far bank. That was too close.'

Alex nodded, he seldom wasted words on the obvious. ‘Tell him, tomorrow at five,' he said.

It was barely light when he rode out on the following morning, and he was not pleased to find Winter at the far side of the wooden bridge that spanned the river a mile above the city. Reining in with unnecessary violence, he demanded to know what she thought she was doing there.

Winter arched her brows at him. ‘Riding,' she said lightly. ‘Why do you ask?' Alex favoured her with a penetrating look and she laughed and said: ‘Very well - I'll confess. I wanted to watch.'

‘Watch what?' Alex's voice and face were not encouraging.