Shadow of the Moon (72 page)

He looked up at the pale segment of moon floating high above the veil of dust that blurred the horizon. A flight of cormorants making for Hazrat Bagh jheel drew a thin dark arrowhead against the opal sky, and a flock of purple pigeons circled above the jostling roof-tops of the city. He wondered how Niaz and Yusaf were faring? It would be far hotter out on the plain than in the cantonments, and they would have had nothing to eat or drink since before dawn. Ramadan, when it fell in the hot weather, was no mean test of endurance, and the knife-wound in Niaz's back was not yet fully healed. ‘I shall have to go myself tonight,' thought Alex. Night work was all very well for Niaz and Yusaf, who could spare the time to sleep by day, but it came hard on Alex, who could not.

He drew rein before the Residency gate and spoke for the first time in almost an hour. ‘When do you leave for the hills?'

‘On the twenty-second,' said Winter listlessly. Her anger had left her and she felt curiously apathetic.

‘Which gives you a week in which to get there,' said Alex. ‘Eight days to be precise. That should be enough. I expect I shall see you before then. Good night.'

He turned his horse and cantered away in the direction of his bungalow and Winter went on under the arch of the gateway past the stately, salaaming figure of Akbar Khan. An hour ago she would not have acknowledged that salutation. An hour ago she had thought him a murderer and had hated both Alex and her husband because they would not hang him for murder. But now, in the grip of the apathy that had taken hold of her, she was not sure. Perhaps Nissa had died a natural death after all.

The high, white-walled rooms of the Residency were unexpectedly cool after the sultry heat of the plain where even the air of the late evening held a breathless suggestion of an open furnace. The lamps had been lit, the doors and windows thrown open and the paths about the house watered to lay the dust. The scent of wet earth was as strong as incense, but though it permeated the lamp-lit rooms and filled the house with a clean fragrance, it could not disguise another scent: the cloying smell of musk and betel nut that belonged to the fat woman who lived in the
bibi-gurh
. So Yasmin had been in the house during her absence. That was unusual. Winter was well aware that the woman visited Conway's rooms by night, but she had never known her to come into the main part of the house before. But tonight she had obviously been there; in the drawing-room and the morning-room. Even in Winter's bedroom.

Conway was in the drawing-room, sprawled on the sofa with a glass of brandy in one hand. He was wearing a thin native-style shirt over white cotton trousers, and both were dark with sweat. It was not late, but he was already unmistakably drunk. There was a silver-mounted hookah on the floor, and the cushions of the sofa were indented as though someone had recently been sitting beside him. Winter had not seen him dressed in such a fashion before, and she did not know if it constituted his usual garb in the hot weather,
or if he were slipping back into a way of life that his marriage had temporarily interrupted. She had told him once that if the woman Yasmin entered the house - she excepted his private rooms - she herself would leave it, and she wondered now what had made Yasmin bold enough to return. Should she make a stand now and carry out her threat?

She surveyed her husband's flushed, vacant face and sodden, sweat-soaked body, and realized that it was useless to talk to him when he was in this condition, since he would not understand a word she said. The apathy that had descended upon her an hour ago pressed down on her with an almost tangible weight. She had not slept at all during the previous night and now she was very tired. Too tired to care about Conway and his fat, musk-scented mistress. It did not matter any more. Nothing mattered any more. Perhaps it was true that their lives were plotted out for them and none could avoid their fate. ‘What is written, is written …'

Someone moved in the shadows behind the lamp that stood on the table at Conway's elbow. It was the pale girl with the yellow hair whom Winter had seen before in this room. Her grey eyes were wide and frightened as though it were she, and not Winter, who was looking at a ghost. Had she died in this house? Was that why something still held her there? ‘
They are killing the mem-log
…'

Conway said thickly: ‘Well, what ish it? Wan' anything?' … and there was no one behind the lamp. Only a white curtain and a vase full of yellow canna lilies, and the shadows …

Winter slept soundly that night despite the heat and the creaking of the punkah. As soundly as Zeb-un-Nissa who lay in the Mohammedan cemetery and did not hear the yelling of the jackal-packs who slunk among the graves. As exhaustedly as Lottie who lay asleep, her thin slippers and frilly skirts torn and ripped by thorns and stained with dust and blood, in a curtained
ekka
whose kindly owner had found her and her two companions crouching in a ditch by the roadside, and had befriended them.

‘I go to Lunjore, and with all speed,' said the driver of the
ekka
. ‘Delhi will be no place for a man of peace for many moons, and I have a brother in Lunjore with whom I will abide until this madness is past.'

38

Alex and Yusaf returned to the bungalow in the dark hour before dawn and by different routes, but Niaz remained invisible. He was reported to be still suffering from fever and unable to leave his bed.

Alex had hoped to sleep late but he was awakened at sunrise by Alam Din. ‘Huzoor,' said Alam Din softly, ‘there is a red kite caught in the thorn tree by the city road.'

‘Damn!' said Alex wearily. ‘Damn and blast! Oh, all right.
Acha
, Alam Din,
main jaunga
.'

He shook himself awake, and twenty minutes later he was riding through the crop-lands in the direction of Chunwar. The mile-long road that led across the open plain to the city boasted a solitary thorn tree that grew near its edge some two hundred yards from the cantonment end, and this morning there was a cheap paper kite such as children fly caught up in its scanty spiked foliage. A vivid scarlet thing, visible from some considerable distance.

Gaily coloured kites flew all day and at all seasons in the sky above the city, and a strayed one that had broken its string was frequently to be found tangled among the branches of trees on the plain. Alex did not pass the thorn tree and barely glanced at it. He took a narrow side-path that skirted a field of mustard, and checking the Eagle by a culvert where the elephant grass grew high and a wild fig tree threw a patch of shadow, he dismounted as though to tighten a girth.

There was a rustle in the grasses and a voice whose owner remained invisible spoke in a whisper that was barely audible above the creaking of a distant well-wheel and the indignant chittering of a striped squirrel:

‘There is word in the bazaar that the
pultons
have risen in Meerut, and have slain all the
Angrezi-log
and ridden on Delhi, which has fallen also. It is said that they have proclaimed Bahadur Shah as Mogul and put all
feringhis
to the sword.'

‘When?' asked Alex, wrestling with a strap.

‘Yesterday only. The news was told at dawn by a fakir at the steps of the Pearl Masjid.'

‘It is not possible,' said Alex. ‘Delhi is far.'

‘Do not the very birds of the air speak to the
bairagis
?' whispered the voice.

Alex said: ‘Is there aught else said?'

‘Nay. What need of more? The city hums like a hive.'

‘Will they rise?'

‘Who knows? There be many
budmarshes
in the bazaars, but the Maulvi's men call upon them to hold back and to wait for the Word. It were better
that none of thy people were seen in the city today. Keep them close. If even a stone were thrown there is no knowing what might follow. Thou knowest the temper of crowds. If they see blood, they run mad like jackals.'

Alex said softly: ‘Go back and bring me word tonight. I will ride by the tomb of Amin-u-din at sunset.'

‘I will try. But I am afraid - afraid. If it were known, they would tear me in pieces!' Alex could hear the man's teeth chatter, and he laid a handful of silver coins in the dust by the rim of the culvert and said: ‘There will be fifty more tonight,' and mounting again rode on in the general direction of Chunwar.

He made a circuit of the crop-lands and returned to the cantonments by way of the rifle-range, riding for the most part at a leisurely walk that necessitated a considerable effort of will, and it was well past eight o'clock by the time he reached the Residency.

He found the Commissioner still abed and naked save for a width of thin cotton cloth wrapped about his waist in the manner of a Burmese
lungi
. The room reeked of musk and stale spirits, and the green-tinted
chiks
over the closed windows toned the light to a twilight dimness. Alex's foot struck against a cluster of little silver bells such as often adorn an Indian woman's anklet, and he found it an effort to restrain a grimace of disgust.

‘Well?' demanded Mr Barton sourly. ‘What is it now? More bees?'

‘I hope it may turn out to be no more than that,' said Alex curtly. ‘There is a tale being circulated in the city of a rising in Meerut and in Delhi. It may be entirely untrue, or there may have been some trouble there that has been grossly exaggerated by rumour. But the story is that the regiments in both places have mutinied and killed all the Europeans, and that Bahadur Shah has been acclaimed as King.'

‘What rubbish!' said the Commissioner angrily. He sat upright and the movement appeared to be painful, for he groaned and put a hand to his head. He glowered at Captain Randall and said: ‘Why, Meerut's crammed with British troops. Crammed with 'em! - at least two thousand. Strongest garrison in India. Poppycock! It's only another bazaar rumour.'

‘Perhaps, sir,' said Alex shortly. ‘The point is not so much whether it is true, as that the city believes it to be true. Such a rumour is bound to give rise to a good deal of excitement, and I should like, with your permission, to put the city out of bounds to all Europeans until the excitement has had time to die down.'

‘Why?'

God give me patience! prayed Alex, setting his teeth. He said calmly and pleasantly, as though reasoning with a backward and fractious child: ‘It takes very little to start a riot among people who have been systematically worked up into a state of excitement and tension as these have been. With this sort of rumour flying round the bazaars, a white face in the city might lead to stone-throwing. And as you know, sir, with a mob that is only a short step
from murder. We cannot afford any unpleasant incidents at the moment. In a day or two at most we should hear if there is anything at all behind the rumours, and if there is not, the excitement will die down. May I take it that you agree to putting the city out of bounds?'

‘Oh yes, I suppose so,' said the Commissioner ungraciously. ‘Don't believe a word of it, but— Well, go on, go on! - do what you like about it and leave me in peace.'

Alex did not linger. He did not return to his own office but went instead to the Commissioner's where he wrote briefly, swiftly and to the point, using the Commissioner's official paper, and then returned to the darkened bedroom with pen and inkwell to demand the Commissioner's signature. Having seen the
chupprassi
leave with the sealed documents, he asked if he might see Mrs Barton, but Winter had gone out.

‘The Memsahib left but half an hour ago,' Iman Bux informed him. ‘She has gone to the city.'

Alex whipped round on the speaker with a suddenness that startled him considerably. ‘
Where?
'

‘To the city,' faltered Iman Bux. ‘To the shop of Ditta Mull the silk merchant, near the Sudder Bazaar.'

‘Who is with her?'

‘Huzoor, the Memsahib went on horseback. I do not know which syce - I will make inquiry, if the Huzoor—'

But Alex had gone.

It was after nine and the tree shadows were shortening on the white dust, while already the heat danced on the open plain so that the mile-distant city appeared to shimmer and waver in the blinding sunlight as though it were made of molten glass. There was a white foam of lather streaking the Eagle's neck and flanks, and Alex's coat was wet with sweat, but his hands and his stomach were cold with fear and rage - a rage that was entirely directed at himself.

‘If I get myself involved in a riot, I may have to shoot,' thought Alex, ‘and if I do that— They won't harm her! They know her too well. They know me too, but I represent Authority, and that may set them off … I ought to let her take her chance. If they kill me that fool Barton will lose his head, and I have not given the order about the bridge, and - I
can't
risk everything just because of one woman! … Nicholson was right - the safeguarding of women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all - I must not go …' But he went.

He reined to a canter as he neared the city gate, and fought down his fear, for a mob was a purely animal thing and like an animal could sense fear. He rode in under the gate at a walk, sitting loosely in the saddle, and called a greeting to the police havildar who saluted him as he passed.

He could feel the pulse and panic of the city swirling about him from the very dust and beating down upon him in the blinding heat. There was an
ominous silence as he passed and a menacing mutter that rose at his back, and the faces that watched him were avid or insolent or uneasy. Those men he knew and spoke to as the Eagle shouldered his way through the crowded bazaar avoided his gaze and shifted unhappily, observing their neighbours with furtive anxiety. Normally, when he rode through the city, they cleared a path for him, but today he found that he must force the Eagle between men who made no attempt to move out of his way, and who jostled and obstructed him with deliberate insolence. His progress became slower and slower; and then a stone hurtled out of the crowd. It missed him and struck a woman, who screamed shrilly.

An indescribable sound rose from the crowd; a sound like the soft, growling snarl of a gigantic cat; and Alex rose in his stirrups, and facing the quarter from whence the stone had been thrown, raised his voice and called a jest across the heads of the crowd. It was a coarse and untranslatable jest relative to the proper treatment of prostitutes, and the crowd, taken by surprise, laughed. The tension snapped and a man called out: ‘Has the Sahib heard the news from Delhi?'

‘
Beshak!
I hear many lies with every morn, Karter Singh. But I wait for the evening, and when the heat of the day is past the truth becomes known.'

‘Is it then the truth?' cried another voice.

‘The heat has surely turned thy brain, Sohan Lal,' said Alex with a laugh. ‘Abide a little, and let it cool!'

The laugh had its effect upon the crowd. Hostility waned and doubt took its place. Perhaps the rumours that had spread like wildfire through the bazaars since dawn were false? for the Sahib, it was plain, had also heard news - yet he laughed. Would he laugh if the news were bad? The crowd drew back and let him pass, their faces sullen and unsure, and twenty yards ahead Alex caught sight of the Maulvi of one of the city mosques making his way along the street. He urged the Eagle to a quicker pace, and drawing level with the man, leaned out and touched him on the shoulder. The Maulvi turned sharply.

‘
As Salaam aleikum
, Maulvi Sahib,' said Alex pleasantly. ‘Canst thou spare the time to lead me to the shop of Ditta Mull in the street of the silk merchants? I cannot call to mind the way.'

He saw the anger flash in the man's eyes, and the cunning replace it as the Maulvi looked up at him and then back at the watching crowd; and knew that he had guessed aright. This was one of Ahmed Ullah of Faizabad's men, and Gopal Nath, hidden in the culvert by the fig tree, had whispered that the Maulvi of Faizabad's men were preaching patience. It was no part of their plan to touch off premature riots, and if there was any truth at all in the rumours concerning Delhi and Meerut they must be feeling alarmed for the success of their carefully laid plans. The man who stood at Alex's stirrup knew quite well that he was familiar with every street and alley and shop in the city and was demanding protection, and he would have given much to
refuse it. But it was as much in his interests as in Alex's own to prevent a premature outbreak in Lunjore, so he smiled sourly and murmured the conventional reply to the greeting:

‘
Wa aleikum Salaam
. If the Sahib will come with me I will show him.'

Furiante's impatiently tossing head, and the frightened face of the syce who was endeavouring to control both horses, were visible above the heads of a noisy jostling crowd who packed the narrow street before Ditta Mull's shop and swayed dangerously to and fro. The panic on the face of the syce did nothing to reassure Alex, and once again he felt fear clutch at his throat, and forced it back. The Maulvi, walking beside him, took the Eagle's bridle and thrust his way through the crowd, who fell back and cleared a passage to the bottom of the five rickety wooden steps that led up to the shop front.