Shadow of the Moon (69 page)

‘Perhaps you do not know,' said Winter pleasantly, ‘that Amir Nath is a friend of mine. He has let me fly his
shahin
.' She saw Alex's mouth tighten ominously and said quickly: ‘He didn't tell me. I promise you. I saw him going this way yesterday evening and I stopped to talk to him. He only said that he thought of taking them out into the open country on the far bank to try them against the partridge there, so I thought I would ride this way and watch. It was only when I saw you that I remembered the pigeon. It is that, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Alex briefly.

‘Can I come? I won't if you'd—'

‘You may as well,' said Alex ungraciously. He called down a greeting to the old fisherman who lived in a reed hut below the bridge, and touched Chytuc with his heel.

A mile and a half down the far bank of the river and out of sight of the city they turned inland through grass and low scrub and drifts of sand, and presently a small white-bearded man, thin as an arrow, rose up apparently out of the ground, and Alex stopped and dismounted.

‘The Huzoor is in good time,' said Amir Nath. ‘Will he fly the
jurra
himself?' He lifted the hooded goshawk that held to his wrist, and the bird turned its head with a faint jingle of bells and flexed and unflexed its taloned feet, stretching a little and ruffling its feathers.

Alex shook his head. ‘No. I have not handled one for too long, and I would not have him miss.' He held out his hand in a heavy leather riding-glove and took the goshawk from the old falconer, stroking it and talking to it while Winter dismounted and talked to Amir Nath. ‘Is Nunni here?' she asked presently. ‘Assuredly,' said the old man, and gave a shrill call.

A small boy rose up from the tall grass and grinned shyly at Winter. He carried a peregrine falcon on his wrist, and was Amir Nath's great-grandson. Winter sat down on a tussock of grass and they carried on an animated three-cornered conversation while the sky paled above them and the partridges awoke, and a flight of parrots swished overhead, making for the river. The goshawk on Alex's hand stretched its neck, turning its head eagerly from left to right and tugging at its jesses, and Alex returned it to Amir Nath.

Five hundred yards above them Yusaf, sitting his horse at the bend of the river, stood up in his stirrups and raised his arm, and Niaz, three hundred yards below him, whistled. Alex said: ‘It will come over high.'

‘High and to the left,' agreed Amir Nath composedly. ‘But he is a king of birds.'

Alex had brought a gun again, but the pigeon was well out of range. It
came flying steadily, as had the one they had seen on the previous morning, making for the borders of Oudh.

‘It is too high,' thought Alex. ‘The hawk will never see it—' Amir Nath had removed the hood and now, with a shrill cry, he hurled the bird up and into the air. There was a rush and a whirr of wings and the goshawk mounted with the speed of a feathered arrow, circling upward. It hung for a moment, motionless, sixty feet above them, and then it had sighted the pigeon and was away.

‘
Shabash
' shrilled little Nunni, dancing among the tussocks of grass.

‘Said I not he was a king of birds?' said Amir Nath. ‘Watch him bound to his prey.
Maro
!
Maro
!'

Niaz, who had ridden up, stooped from the saddle, and Nunni, thrusting the tercel at his great-grandfather, clutched at his hand and scrambled up before him with the agility of a squirrel, and then they were away in pursuit.

The pigeon flapped and jinked, turning and twisting, making for the shelter of the dense miles of jungle that blanketed the borders of Lunjore and Oudh. But she did not reach it. The goshawk towered above her, seized her and clung to her and dropped to the ground.

Three hours later Alex was confronting the Commissioner with a small strip of native-made paper on which were written a few lines in
shikust
. ‘And that, I think, sir,' he concluded, ‘is how bad news seems to get about this country so quickly. There's probably a chain system of 'em.'

‘What the devil does it say?' demanded the Commissioner peevishly.

“‘
It is too soon. Be patient and await the auspicious day
.”'

‘Well - well? What of it? Can't see any harm in that? Too soon for what? Doesn't make sense!'

‘I take it to refer to some premature outbreak in Oudh,' said Alex with exemplary patience. ‘If we hear within the next day or so that any such incident has occurred, I think we can take it as conclusive. I know that it does not prove much by itself, but added to all the rest it seems to me to have points of interest. Not the least of them being that we now know that we have leading agents and agitators in the city. It also bears out the theory that what is planned is a simultaneous rising on a given date - “the auspicious day”.'

‘Nonsense!' said the Commissioner. ‘Probably refers to a wedding.'

‘As you like, sir,' said Alex in his most expressionless voice.

‘Why do I do it?' he thought, walking back to his bungalow. ‘Why in hell's name do I do it? It's a waste of time and it only puts his back up. Yet I cannot keep him in the dark. I can't have him saying when the mine goes off, “Why did you never tell me?” Justifying myself in advance again! - as if it mattered. Oh, well, I suppose I may as well do the thing thoroughly and be damned to it—'

He spent another exhausting and abortive morning on his feet (he was not
offered a chair) placing his views yet again before the three commanding officers of the regiments stationed in Lunjore. But with no better results than before. Colonel Gardener-Smith still steadfastly refused to believe anything against his men, though Alex suspected him of feeling less confident than usual, and was sorry for the old gentleman.

‘You don't understand, Randall,' the Colonel had burst out, striking his hands together passionately. ‘You are young and you have never commanded a regiment - you have barely served with one! Can you not see that it is you, and men like you, who are responsible for any feeling of - of unrest that there may be in the Bengal Army? Where there is complete confidence there can be no suspicion and distrust, and it is distrust - this distrust that you are doing your best to arouse - that breeds disaffection! I
cannot
distrust my men. To do so would destroy them - and myself!'

Colonel Moulson had been offensive, and Colonel Packer had announced that he trusted in the Lord and therefore feared no evil. Alex went down to the police lines and discussed the possibility of disaffection among the police with Major Maynard who commanded them.

Major Maynard alone confessed to uneasiness, but not on account of his police, whom he believed to be staunch.

‘It's old Packer,' he said. ‘Unless something can be done to stop him preaching the Word to his men we shall find ourselves in the basket. Can nothing be done to gag the old fool?'

‘I've tried,' said Alex tiredly. ‘I got him an official wigging, which he holds against me. I gather I am one of those “by whom the offence cometh"! But that was the best I could do.'

‘It doesn't appear to have damped his proselytizing ardour,' commented Major Maynard. ‘Perhaps he yearns for a martyr's crown?'

‘I daresay he does - and at this rate he'll get it! But I have no desire to qualify for one myself. Doesn't he know he's playing with gunpowder? He told me that he was “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's”, and that as, in temporal matters, he obeyed the orders of his superior officers in the Army, so in spiritual matters, as a Soldier of Christ, he obeyed the orders of the Lord, which instructed him to save the heathen from damnation. He has a great deal of support in Lunjore.'

‘Among the sepoys?'

‘Good God, no! Among the ladies. They look upon him as a saintly man and a shining example to the less devout - such as Moulson!'

‘Moulson's too much of a martinet,' said Major Maynard gloomily. ‘Seems to be no happy medium! There's old Gardener pottering around with his watering-can, cherishin' his fellows as though they were tender plants, and Packer looking upon his as erring sheep to be gathered into the fold, while Moulson goes to the other extreme and slings his sepoys into irons if they so much as blink on parade. He'll go too far one day, but there's no denying
that his lot are the best disciplined of the bunch. I'd say there was a lot less chance of them cracking than of Packer's strayed lambs.'

‘Or your own?' inquired Alex.

‘Oh, they're all right,' said Major Maynard easily. ‘But I'll bear in mind what you say and keep a sharp eye on 'em. Personally, I'm inclined to think that the worst is past. I hear they hanged that Jack who touched off the Barrackpore business - Mangal Pandy? And the jemadar as well. That ought to stop the rot.'

‘I envy you your optimism,' said Alex drily, and rode back slowly to his bungalow through the blinding sunlight and the hot shadows of the wide cantonment road.

36

The telegraph did not as yet operate in Lunjore, and so it was not until two days later that the news trickled over the border from Oudh that on Sunday, May 3rd, the 7th Regiment of Oudh Irregulars had refused to accept their cartridges, and had mutinied. Sir Henry Lawrence had apparently acted with great promptness and succeeded in disarming the Regiment - a good many of whom had absconded - and fifty of the ringleaders had been seized.

“‘
It is too soon
,”' said Alex, rereading that laconic dispatch. “‘
Be patient and await the auspicious day
.”' He crumpled up the tiny scrap of paper and flung it from him in sudden rage, and rode out in the heat of the day to visit one of the influential landowners in his district.

It was that night that Niaz woke him at one o'clock in the morning.

Alex slept out in the open in the hot weather, and had, in other years, slept in the garden. But this year his bed had been carried up nightly to the flat roof of his bungalow, and Alam Din slept across the stair that led up to it. Alex was a light sleeper at the best of times, and the whispers woke him. There was a quality of urgency about them that sent him out of bed and across the roof within less than ten seconds of his waking.

‘
Kaun hai
?' (Who is it?)

‘Come down, Huzoor,' whispered Alam Din. ‘It is Niaz, and I think he is sorely hurt.'

Alex ran down the stairs and his bare foot slid on something wet. He knew the feel of that sticky wetness of old, and caught the dark figure that sagged against the bottom of the stair, and said sharply to Alam Din: ‘Take his feet.'

‘No,' gasped Niaz with an attempt at a laugh. ‘I can walk. Give me thy shoulder, brother.'

Alex thrust Alam Din ahead of him: ‘Light a lamp in my room - quickly! Where art thou hurt?'

‘In the back, to the left. But it has missed its mark. Do not fear.'

Alex pulled Niaz's right arm about his shoulder and half-carried him to the bedroom, where he could see the flicker of a light as Alam Din lit the oil-lamp and drew the curtains. He could feel the warm wetness that soaked Niaz's clothing, and in spite of the heat of the May night he found that his hands were cold with rage. The wound was an unpleasant one, but as Niaz had said, it had missed its mark, for it had been deflected by the shoulder-blade and Niaz was suffering more from loss of blood than from anything else. He had walked a mile or more after he had been knifed.

‘It was in the lines,' said Niaz. ‘I had—'

‘Quiet,' said Alex curtly. ‘Tell me later. We will bind thee first.' He cut
away the blood-soaked clothing, and with Alam Din's assistance washed and bound up the wound and sent him off to brew strong tea.

‘I can go no more to the lines,' said Niaz ruefully. ‘It is finished. For long they have not trusted me, and I too have carried a knife for fear of this thing. And then to be caught off guard like a fledgling!
Pah
!' He grimaced with pain and drank the hot, sweet liquid thirstily.

‘Who was it?'

‘I do not know. I went to talk with those whom I thought to be friends of mine in the lines of the 93rd, and to listen. But tonight they would not talk, and they looked at me out of their eyes, sideways, and there was a constraint upon them. There was a
bairagi
in the lines - a sadhu. I saw him standing in the shadows of a hut. He stayed silent and did not move as I passed, and I made as though I had not seen him. When I came away I looked to see if he was still there, but he had gone, and I put my hand upon my knife and walked as a cat walks in an alley full of dogs.'

Niaz grinned to hide another spasm of pain and drank again, his teeth chattering on the rim of the mug. ‘There is a lamp by the
peepul
tree at the turn of the lines, by the
bunnia
's shop,' he said between mouthfuls, ‘and there was a gun lying in the dust … A revolver such as the sahibs carry. A child's trick that should not have deceived a babe, yet I stooped for it. I heard the step but I could not avoid the blow. Had I not heard it, that knife would have struck true.'

Alex said: ‘Was there nothing to tell who it was?'

‘I did not see. I fell, and turned as I fell, but he had gone like a shadow, and I did not wait. But I think it was the sadhu.'

‘Why?'

Niaz wrinkled his nose expressively and Alex nodded. He too knew the characteristic smell of the ash-smeared, unwashed ascetics of India.

Niaz had a touch of fever the next day, but the ugly wound had bled itself clean, and he suffered remarkably few ill-effects from it. The weather continued unusually mild, and all over India women who had intended to leave for the hills delayed and put off the day of departure while the nights remained cool, and the Commissioner of Lunjore informed his wife that he could not arrange for her to leave for the hills before the twenty-second of the month. It seemed that Mrs Gardener-Smith and Delia, Mrs Hossack and her four children, and a Captain and Mrs Batterslea and their young family were all leaving on that date, and therefore it would be more convenient if she were to travel with them, since Captain Batterslea's presence would save him from having to arrange for an escort for her.

Winter acquiesced without interest. She would have gone willingly enough if Lottie or Sophie and Mrs Abuthnot had gone with her, because she would then at least have been more assured as to their safety, but she could not feel disturbed as to her own. She still rode every morning before sunrise and again in the cool of the evening, but she saw nothing of Alex for several days
and heard nothing of him until Colonel Moulson remarked in her hearing one evening that he understood that Captain Randall had taken shooting-leave.

‘So much for all this hot air he has been talking,' said Colonel Moulson with scorn. ‘Shows how much he believes in it if he can chuck his responsibilities and go off after jungle-cock. Tried to set us all by the ears, and when he found he couldn't panic us, goes off and sulks in the
terai
. I wonder you let him go, Con. I'm damned if I'd have done so! What that cub needs is five years of regimental soldiering under a CO. who'd knock the conceit out of him. Wish I had him under my command!'

‘You
have
got your knife into him, haven't you, Fred?' said Mrs Cottar pleasantly. ‘Now I wonder why? Did he snap some lovely creature from under your nose? Con used to feel quite kindly towards him until the Aurora Borealis preferred him to his Excellency the Commissioner - didn't you, Con? But ever since then he's gone sour on him too - just like you. How vain you men are!'

The Commissioner cast her a glance of dislike and said sourly: ‘I don't know why I put up with you, Lou. As for you, Fred, to hear you talk anyone ‘ud think I'd given the man a month's leave instead of three days.'

‘You can give him three years for all I care,' said Colonel Moulson. ‘Place is a sight better off without him. Your deal—'

Alex resented the lost days considerably more than Colonel Moulson, but there were certain preparations that he thought it necessary to make, and they could not be made in a night. Niaz, he considered, could hardly have selected a worse moment to be laid up with a knife wound, but time was too short to wait until he had recovered. Niaz himself had angrily asserted that he had taken no harm, and had begged to go with him, but Alex had been adamant. He would take Alam Din and, for the look of the thing, his
shikari
, Kashmera; those two could do all that was necessary, and he would need Niaz later on.

A thin-shanked, grizzled little man, wearing a vast dust-coloured
puggari
and a tattered coat ornamented with the tarnished buttons of a long-forgotten regiment of Indian Cavalry, arrived at Alex's bungalow in the dark hour before dawn, and Alam Din coughed discreetly outside the bedroom door and murmured: ‘Huzoor, the
shikari
has come and the trap is at the door.' Kashmera knew more about game, both furred and feathered, and more about the dense miles of jungle, than any other man in the district, and he had often accompanied Alex and Niaz on shooting camps. He and Alam Din loaded the trap by the light of an oil-lamp with a variety of packages and several guns.

‘Let be!' said Alex sharply to Niaz, who had heard the sound of the wheels as the trap was brought round from the stables and had come out to lend a hand. He took a small square box quickly from Niaz's hands: ‘Thy time will come. There is the road to be thought of, and thou art of no use to me maimed. Keep to thy bed while I am gone.'

Niaz jerked his head at the
shikari
and said in an undertone: ‘Does he know?'

‘Not yet. But he will see that we do not bring back what we take out, and so I must tell him something … though not all. We will go upriver and make camp beyond Bardari as though we would shoot
kala hirren
, and Alam Din and I will come down by boat and at night, which will be easy. It is the getting back that will be hard, because the stream will be against us. See that no
bairagis
visit thee while I am gone!'

Three days later they returned after dark, with the horns of a blackbuck and a dozen partridges on the floorboards of the trap. Kashmera had been driving, for both Alex and Alam Din were sound asleep: they had had little sleep, and then only in the day-time, during the last three days.

‘How is the wound?' inquired Alex on the following morning.

‘It is healed,' said Niaz impatiently. ‘It was but a flesh wound. How much longer do I stay here?'

‘For another week, I think,' said Alex. He smiled a little grimly at Niaz's face of disgust and said softly: ‘It is in my mind that thou wert so sorely wounded that I must ride abroad with a syce for some days yet, so that all will know that thou art still a sick man and unable to go about.'

‘Aah!' said Niaz, and smiled. ‘What now?'

Alex explained. ‘… and if thou and one other go, on foot and by night, and while it is known that thou art sick, I think that the thing may be done.'

‘So do I also,' said Niaz. ‘Give out that I am like to die. That should please those dogs in the lines! Who goes with me? Yusaf?'

Alex considered the matter, frowning, and after a moment or two said curtly: ‘It will have to be.'

He found Winter sitting under the punkah of the small drawing-room on the following morning, writing a letter to Lottie. It was Sunday, and she had just returned from church. Her formal dress of grey, white-spotted
mousseline de chine
looked fresh and cool, and her discarded bonnet lay on the sofa. She looked up in surprise when he entered and he saw her cheeks flush with sudden colour. She seemed to be aware of this herself, for she stood up rather quickly and turned so that her back was to the light.

‘I came to ask if I might borrow Yusaf for a few days,' said Alex, dispensing with formalities. ‘Niaz is sick and there is a certain amount of work I need done that I think Yusaf could do for me. It will only be for a few days. Can you spare him?'

‘Yes, of course. But—'

‘Thank you. It will mean that you will have to take one of the Commissioner's syces with you when you ride. Don't go too far afield, and stay away from the city. I'll send him back as soon as I can.'

He turned to leave and Winter said: ‘I heard that you had taken shooting-leave. When did you get back?'

‘Last night,' said Alex uncommunicatively, and left.

The door closed behind him and Winter regarded it with a smouldering eye. ‘There are times,' she said aloud and deliberately, ‘when I am almost glad that I once hit you!'

She returned to her desk and the sheet of letter-paper that so far bore only the address, and picking up her pen, dipped it in the standish. But she did not write. She sat nibbling the end of it thoughtfully while the minutes ticked by and the ink dried on the nib.

The punkah creaked and flapped gently and monotonously overhead and a pair of gecko lizards on the wall behind the desk chirruped a small, shrill accompaniment. In the garden outside, a
köil
, ‘the brain-fever bird', was singing its maddening hot-weather song on a long, rising scale:
brain fever … brain fever … brain fever
! sang the
köil
, finishing at the top of the scale and starting all over again at the bottom, as tirelessly monotonous as the creaking of the punkah. It was hot today. Hotter than it had been for many days, and in every room the doors and windows had been closed before sunrise to keep in the cooler air of the night and exclude the burning heat of May. ‘There will be no more cool nights now until the
bursat
(the rains),' Iman Bux had said that morning.