Shadow of the Moon (71 page)

Winter said in a small, hard voice: ‘And what do you think yourself?'

‘What I think has nothing whatever to do with it,' said Alex at his curtest.

‘Then you won't do anything?'

‘There is nothing I can do beyond what I have already done. The child was buried at four o'clock.
Ab khutam hogai
.' (Now it is finished.) He turned his head and looked at the set white face beside him and said after a moment: ‘I'm sorry, Winter.'

She did not look at him and her own hurt made her desire to hurt him also. ‘No, you're not. You didn't know her. To you and Conway she was only another Indian child. A “native”; what does she matter? You would both of you have made more fuss over a dog, and a great deal more over a horse. Do you mind if we do not discuss it any more?'

Alex gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and said nothing further. He did not wish to discuss it himself. He knew something of Zeb-un-Nissa and her reputation. Epileptics were often regarded in India as being possessed of devils or favoured by God, and he had seen himself the power that the child had over wild creatures, though he had attributed it to the simple fact, unusual in a child, that she possessed infinite patience, never made any movement that was not slow and unhurried, and could sit motionless for hours at a time. But Winter's account of what the child had said last night disturbed him.

It was not that he believed Zeb-un-Nissa to have had second sight, but it seemed to him quite likely that she was repeating something, or dreaming of something, that she had heard discussed. If so, that would account for Winter's conviction that Akbar Khan had been afraid. If Akbar Khan had imagined the child to be talking of something she had overheard, she might well have been assisted to die. However, as O'Dwyer had not been prepared to interfere, there was nothing further that could be done about it. But the words that the child had said repeated themselves again and again in his brain as they had repeated themselves in Winter's last night - ‘They are killing the mem-
log
! - they are killing the mem-
log
! …'

Perhaps it was just as well that Zeb-un-Nissa was dead, and that there had
been no one to call out during that long, burning day that they could hear the mem-
log
screaming.

Delhi was far away, hidden behind the dust and the dancing heat-haze and the parched, blazing plains, and Mrs Abuthnot had not screamed as she died in the hot sunlight within the Kashmir Gate where so short a time before the officers from the cantonments by the Ridge had held that gay moonlight picnic. But little Miss Jennings, the Chaplain's daughter, and young Miss Clifford, who had sung ‘Where are the flowers?' to the accompaniment of her mandolin and Captain Larrabie's guitar, had screamed and shrieked as the clawing, blood-stained hands snatched at them and the reddened sabres cut and slashed. And all through that long hot day the shrieks of women and the terrified screaming of children, the crackle of flames and the howl of the mob, had risen from Duryagunj - that once quiet quarter of Delhi where the European and Eurasian clerks and pensioners and Indian Christians had lived and were now dying in terror and agony in the blinding, merciless sunlight.

All through that long hot day frantic officers in Meerut - where the terror had broken out and from where the mutineers, after a night of murder, had ridden for Delhi - ground their teeth and waited, or pleaded for permission to ride after them. There were more British troops in Meerut than in almost any other garrison in India, and not all the native regiments had revolted; only let them follow up the mutineers and save Delhi before it was too late - or at least send warning! But General Hewitt was old and fat and infirm. The magnitude of the crisis had left him too bewildered to take any decisive action, and Brigadier Wilson, left to take the initiative, hesitated and was lost: ‘We cannot spare any men: we have to think of the women and children,' said Brigadier Wilson uneasily. ‘We cannot risk a repetition of last night's massacres. We must protect the remaining women and children.' He would not sanction any pursuit …

All through that long hot day the Delhi garrison waited and hoped, watching the Meerut road for the help that they could not believe would fail them. And every moment that the help delayed, the mutineers of the 3rd Cavalry and those who had joined them grew bolder, and more and more of the city rabble gathered before the Palace where the tatterdemalion court of the aged King of Delhi grew hourly more confident.

‘It is true - it is true!' urged Zeenut Mahal, the scheming favourite of old Bahadur Shah. ‘They say that they have killed every
feringhi
in Meerut; men, women, and children also. It must be true, for see - there is no dust cloud on the Meerut road. If any remained alive, think you they would not ride with all speed for Delhi to take vengeance? They are dead. They must all be dead. Let us kill all the
feringhis
in Delhi also, and then thou wilt be King indeed!'

‘It is true - it must be true,' said the scum of the city, sharpening swords and knives for the slaughter. ‘They have killed every
feringhi
in Meerut! Let us do the like here.'

‘It is true!' yelled the men of the 3rd Cavalry, who had fled to Delhi in
dread of pursuit and the vengeance that they had imagined to be on their heels and who now saw, with incredulity, that none pursued. ‘Did we not tell you that we have slain them all? The King! The King of Delhi! Help us, O King!
Deen! Deen! Maro! Maro!
'

Lottie had seen her father cut down by his own men, an expression of utter disbelief upon his rubicund, cherubic face, as though he could not and would not believe, even in the moment of his death, that this thing was possible. She had made no sound, because she herself did not believe what she had seen. Standing with her mother and a dozen other women and their children who had taken refuge at the Main Guard within the Kashmir Gate, she had seen him ride up to the gate with his men; placid and confident, but hurrying them forward so that this preposterous situation, the details of which he could not believe to have been correctly reported, should be put to an end at once. She had heard his fussy, fatherly voice - this pleasant, kindly little man of whom she knew so little - raised in expostulation when his men had checked before the gate. And a minute later she had seen him dragged from his horse and three bayonets plunged into his body.

His Subadar-Major and his Indian orderly had fired on the murderers and been themselves cut down, and Lottie, looking down dazedly from the rose-red walls where she had picnicked and walked in the peaceful autumn days of the vanished year, had thought how red and bright the blood looked on the hot white dust.

‘It cannot be happening,' thought Lottie. ‘It cannot be true …'

‘I don't see ‘as ‘ow we can ‘old out much longer, sir,' said Conductor Buckley to Lieutenant Willoughby who commanded the Delhi Magazine. ‘Them perishers ‘av brought scalin' ladders—' His words were barely audible above the howling of the mob and the incessant rattle and crash of gunfire.

They had been holding the Magazine since morning, and now the sun was moving down the sky again. Was it only four o'clock? Nine of them, against a howling, yelling mob of thousands. Nine of them to man ten guns—

‘Scully says the train's laid, sir!' yelled Conductor Buckley. ‘Any sign from the Meerut road yet, sir?'

Young Lieutenant Willoughby ran to the river bastion and strained his eyes for a last look down the hot, empty road where the heat-haze danced and shimmered under the brazen sky. ‘No. They are not coming. Perhaps they are all dead. We cannot wait any longer.'

He looked up at the blue of the sky, his eyes calm and youthful in the sweating, dust-grimed, powder-blackened mask that was his face, and then glanced at the swarming thousands who clambered in, monkey-wise, over the walls, hemming the defenders into the last narrow square of ground.

‘We shall take a good many of them with us,' said Lieutenant Willoughby. ‘All right, Buckley. Give him the signal to fire it.'

The ground and the buildings and the very sky seemed to rock and reel and sway to the appalling crash of sound that silenced the savage roar of the maddened city, and a vast cloud, rose-red and beautiful in the level sunlight, lifted up above the domes and minarets; above the groves and gardens of the city of the Moguls; reaching up higher and higher into the still air and spreading out like a blossoming flower on a tall white stem.

It hung there for hours, an ephemeral memorial to gallantry. But as though the sound of the explosion had been a signal, the sullen, hesitating sepoys within the Main Guard turned upon those who had taken refuge there, and Lottie, who had run down from the wall at the sight of Edward, saw her mother fall without a sound, a hole through her temple, and saw a sabre slash down through her husband's head, laying it open almost to the shoulder.

She had screamed then, and fought to go to him, but someone had caught her arms and dragged her struggling and shrieking to the battlements, and then hands were gripping her wrists and she was being lowered down from the wall, swaying and turning against the hot stone, and screaming for Edward. The makeshift life-line of hastily knotted belts broke, and she fell and struck the hard ground and rolled into the ditch, the breath knocked out of her body, to be caught again and dragged on and up the steep escarpment, running and stumbling over the rough ground to plunge headlong into the tangled thickets of the Kudsia Bagh …

The crash of the explosion shivered through the hot stillness and rocked the Flagstaff Tower on the Ridge, where the terrified families from the cantonments had been crowded together in helpless confusion all that long day, waiting for news and straining their eyes through the heat-haze towards the city and the empty Meerut road. The women gasped and flinched to the hammerblow of the sound, while their servants wailed aloud and the children shrieked excitedly as a white column of smoke shot up from the distant city to spread into a slow rose-red corona that hung above the mangled bodies of the thousand dead who had died in the explosion of the Magazine.

‘We can't wait here any longer,' said a haggard-faced officer pacing the Ridge. ‘What in hell's name are they doing in Meerut? They
cannot
all be dead! For God's sake, why don't we do something to help those poor devils in the city? There's still the river arsenal to draw on. We could have made some sort of a show, instead of just leaving them to be slaughtered!'

‘Don't be a fool, Mellish! We've got to think of the women and children. As it was, we had to weaken the city garrison in order to keep sufficient men here for their protection. We can't try any “forlorn hopes” while we have their safety to consider.'

‘Then why didn't we send them off to Karnal as soon as we got the first news? Why the devil don't we send them now? Every moment that we hesitate increases the danger for them and for us, and most of all for those who are trapped in the city. No one seems to have done a dam' thing in Meerut, and
no one is doing anything here - except young Willoughby who has evidently had the guts to blow up the Magazine. Surely anything is better than standing by like this and watching the few men who might remain loyal losing all confidence in us?
Look
—! What's that - there's a cart coming up the road! Is it news at last?'

A bullock-cart creaked and jolted slowly up the road in a cloud of dust, to halt by the Flagstaff Tower where the sinking sun illuminated its contents with brutal clarity: the slashed, stiffening, blood-stained bodies of half a dozen British officers, thrown in as carelessly as though they had been so many bales of straw. A challenge flung at the Ridge by the triumphant city. A challenge that would not be taken up for many days.

The moon gathered light as the last of the daylight faded, and those who had stood all day on the Ridge of Delhi, hoping and fearing and waiting for the help from Meerut that never came, prepared to leave at last. ‘It will be dark in half an hour,' said the Brigadier, his eyes still straining towards the empty Meerut road. ‘The women had better go, and they will need protection. You had all better go while the road to Karnal is still open.'

The glare of burning bungalows in the cantonments made a second sunset in the sky as carriages and dog-carts and men on foot and on horseback streamed away into the gathering darkness, to begin that long torment of flight through a hostile land during which so many were to die. The Brigadier waited until they had gone, and then with the last remaining officer on his staff he faced the sullen remnants of his command. ‘Sound the Assembly,' said the Brigadier, and heard the familiar bugle-call ring out in the silence.

A single figure, a sepoy of the 74th Bengal Native Infantry, answered the summons; standing stiffly to attention, lonely and obedient in the gathering dusk. The only one to remain faithful to his salt out of all those serried ranks of men who twenty-four hours ago would have obeyed that call.

The Brigadier's shoulders sagged tiredly, and he turned at last and rode away from the Ridge, leaving the deserted cantonments to the night and the looters, while behind him, high above the darkening city, the last of the daylight and the first rays of the moon lit a fading cloud that still hung above the shattered Magazine and marked the only decisive stand that had been made in all that terrible day.

Winter had not spoken again during that evening ride and Alex was too occupied with his own thoughts to notice the fact. He was sorry for her, but it occurred to him that there were going to be a great many other things to be sorry for soon. He could not send Niaz to the lines any more, and his various sources of information in the city and the surrounding towns and villages were becoming less and less easy to get in touch with. They were afraid of being seen near his bungalow, and what news they brought was inconclusive and disturbing.