Shadow of the Moon (77 page)

It did not need more than one look to see that she was dead, but the sight of her mutilated body checked Alex and turned him back from the road he had meant to take.

From the moment that he had heard the first news of the outbreak he had thought of only one thing and seen only one thing: the thin, tired, dauntless face of Henry Lawrence who had said: ‘If it comes, I shall look to you to hold the western road for me.' And when he had learned that the 93rd had expressed their intention of marching for Delhi he had been conscious only of relief. Let them go to Delhi - let them go anywhere as long as it was not eastward into Oudh. ‘
Given time, I believe I may be able to hold Oudh quiet even if the rest of India rises; but it is time we need! - time most of all: and that is a thing which God and the Government may not grant me. The sands are running out, Alex
…'

‘If I can help to give him even one more day,' had been the driving thought in Alex's brain ever since the morning that Gopal Nath had whispered the first news of the Meerut mutiny and the fall of Delhi, and it had filled his mind to the exclusion of all else during the past half-hour. But now, looking down at Mrs Batterslea's dead, staring face and breastless, outraged body, he saw another face. Winter's. Saw it as clearly and as distinctly as though it were she and not Alice Batterslea who was lying at his feet among the trampled rose-bushes. And turning back, he rode for the Residency, hating himself; cursing aloud in a breathless, blasphemous whisper, but driven by an emotion and a fear that he could not control.

The heavy, iron-studded doors of the Residency gate had been closed that
morning and the police guard ordered to keep them barred, but the door of the narrow wicket in the main gate, through which only one at a time could enter, stood ajar. There was a crowd before the gate; a swaying, yelling, crowd who were being harangued by a wild-eyed figure in a green turban - Akbar Khan, the gatekeeper.

‘Kill them!' screamed Akbar Khan. ‘Slay all, and let not one escape! For the Faith! For the Faith!
Maro
!
Maro
!'

They heard the sound of the furious galloping hoof-beats and scattered like a whirl of dead leaves as Alex rode into them. He fired only once and saw Akbar Khan topple forward with an expression of ludicrous surprise on his face, and then he had flung himself from the saddle, the Eagle's rearing body protecting him momentarily from the crowd, and in that fractional moment he was through the narrow wicket. A bullet fired by someone within the gate smacked into the woodwork within an inch of him and he stumbled over the body of a man who lay across the threshold, and turning, threw himself against the narrow door and dropped the heavy bar into place.

He turned from it, revolver in hand, and saw the faces of the police guard, sullen and unsure as they fidgeted uneasily with their muskets, and knew that there was no security there.

‘Sorry, Randall,' said a gasping voice from the shadows of the gate. ‘Nearly got you. Thought it was another of those swine.'

Major Maynard, commanding the Military Police, was sitting on the ground with his back to the wall and one hand pressed to his side in a vain attempt to stem the red tide that welled out between his fingers. He held a smoking revolver in the other, a bullet from which had narrowly missed Alex, and his men watched him and did not move.

‘Y'r just in time,' said Major Maynard. ‘Tell 'em up at the house - run for it.' He saw the movement of the revolver in Alex's hand and said: ‘No. It wasn't them. They ain't as far gone as that. It was that gatekeeper of yours.'

Alex faced the watching men and said harshly: ‘Take up the Sahib and carry him to the house. Quickly!'

‘
No
!' gasped Major Maynard. ‘No … wouldn't be any use. I know that … so do you. I've got … fifteen minutes perhaps … and as long as … I'm here … they'll do nothing. When I'm gone … they'll open the gate, and run fer it. Get up to the house … tell 'em t' get out. I'll hold these for … a few minutes …'

Alex did not wait. He had told Wardle twenty minutes ago to get the women away, and they must have gone already. But he had to be sure. He turned and ran for the distant house, across the iron-hard lawn and over the flower-beds, and reaching the verandah leapt up the steps with the noise of the mob beyond the Residency gate rising into a roar behind him.

But no one had gone. They were all there still. Perhaps a dozen men and more than twice as many women and children. A flower garden of women in preposterous, pale-coloured, wide-hooped skirts, tight-fitted bodices and
thin, inadequate, flat-heeled slippers. Women whose faces, sallow from the heat and inactivity of the hot weather, were now greenish-white with fear.

‘Good God!' said Alex furiously, ‘what the hell d'you think you're doing? Go on - get these women away! Wardle, I thought I told you—'

‘Safer here,' gasped Captain Wardle. ‘The gunners are loyal and the police'll hold …'

‘The gunners have broken and the police will run within five minutes - and half the riff-raff of the city is out there,' snapped Alex. ‘Go on - out by the back and over the bridge. Get into the jungle! It's your only chance.
Run
!'

He saw Winter's face across the width of the room. She had one arm about Lottie and her eyes were wide and enormous but quite steady. There was a sudden and louder burst of yelling and a crash that told its own tale, and Alex ran to the window, took one look and was across the room and had flung open the door that led out of the drawing-room and to the back of the house: ‘
Run
!'

They ran; picking up screaming children, clasping babies, sobbing and panting, tripping over their wide skirts. Winter said: ‘Take Lottie, Mrs Holly,' and pushed them out through the door, ‘you know the way.' She stood back, urging the women to speed, and then Alex had caught her wrist and was running with her, dragging her. He pulled her down the steps of the back verandah and thrusting her ahead of him said breathlessly: ‘Over the bridge - quick as you can!' and then he had left her.

After the dimness of the shuttered house the sunlight was unbelievably hot and bright. The heat and the glare met her like the blaze from a blast furnace and added to the complete unreality of the moment. Far across the gardens, through the intervening trees and shadows, she could see a crowd of little figures pouring through the gate. For Major Maynard had been right. He had lived considerably less than the fifteen minutes that he had hoped for, and when they saw that he was dead his men had thrown away their muskets and unbarred the gates, letting in the maddened mob of sepoys who had now been reinforced by a rabble from the city.

‘Run, damn you!' shouted Alex from the turn of the house. She saw him jerk up his arm and fire, and picking up her wide skirts she ran as he had told her to - ran after Lottie and Mrs Holly and a dozen others who had made for the bridge over the nullah.

But they had not all run for the bridge. Many of them had checked and turned back, daunted by the glare and the empty spaces and the yelling of the mob, and deeming the shuttered house a safer refuge had run to hide instead in closets and cupboards and under the frilled valances of beds, locking themselves into darkened rooms and cowering behind the furniture. Others, confused by terror and the blinding sunlight, had lost their sense of direction and were running helplessly to and fro like panic-stricken animals, dodging behind trees and shrubs.

Winter saw Lottie and Mrs Holly reach the bridge and cross it and run on
towards the tangled thickets thirty yards beyond it. Her wide skirts swayed and swooped and the ground under her thin flat-heeled slippers felt unbelievably hot. She had almost reached the bridge when she saw someone on horseback galloping towards her from the far side of the nullah. A fair-haired girl on a chestnut horse. The shadowy horse - surely she could see the trees through it? - saw her and shied violently, and instinctively Winter flung herself to one side, and a bullet that would have struck her between the shoulders passed harmlessly by.

She did not see what happened to the horse and rider, for a shriek behind her made her check and turn, and it was Delia, running towards her from the direction of the house.

Delia's muslin ruffles flared about her like the petals of a huge peony in the wind, and the ribbon had fallen from her hair so that her long chestnut curls streamed out behind her. Her face was a mask of terror and her mouth a screaming square. Men were running behind her, covering the ground with great bounds - two men wearing dirty turbans and scanty garments that were spattered with blood, one of whom had armed himself with a grass-cutter's sickle. His teeth looked astonishingly white in his dark face and he was gaining on Delia easily.

This is not happening, said something in Winter's brain. Her hand went to the deep pocket in her skirt and she pulled out the revolver and levelled it, but she could not fire because Delia was directly between her and the pursuing man; and even as she hesitated, he caught her. A dark, sinewy hand clutched at Delia's curls, caught them and dragged her back. The sickle swept, and Delia's severed head, its mouth still open and its blue eyes wide in terror, remained in the man's hand dangling by its curls, while her body fell sideways in a foam of gay muslin flounces.

Winter fired and the man tripped and fell, and Delia's head, released from his outflung hand, struck the bridge, rolled and came to a stop almost at Winter's feet. The second man had stumbled over the body of the first and fallen also, but he pulled himself to his knees. He carried a butcher's knife in his hand and there were fresh blood-stains upon it. Winter recognized him as a butcher from the cantonment bazaar, and as he scrambled to his feet she fired again and missed, and then the revolver jammed. The man ran forward, howling threats and obscenities, and Winter flung the useless weapon in his face. She heard a shot and saw him stagger and fall, and then from somewhere Alex had appeared, running towards her. He leapt the sprawled body of the man on the bridge, stooped swiftly to snatch up the fallen revolver, and said breathlessly: ‘Run—'

‘No!' gasped Winter, catching at the rail, ‘we can't! Look—'

There were screaming women and children in the Residency garden, running across the lawns, blind with terror; dodging like hunted hares while muskets cracked and dark-faced, blood-stained, blood-crazed men pursued them, yelling and laughing.

Alex thrust the revolver into his belt, and gripping her arms tore her free and dragged her by main force across the bridge and down the path that stretched for thirty yards or so over open ground before entering the narrow arm of jungle that lay between the back of the Residency and the plain. He did not keep to the path but plunged off it right-handed, dragging her with him and thrusting his way between the high grass and thin scrub, the bamboo-brakes and the
dhâk
trees; and when he stopped it was only because Winter's crinoline was hopelessly impeding their progress. From behind them they could still hear clearly a bedlam of shots and shouts and screams, but they did not appear to have been pursued. There were too many victims in the grounds of the Residency, and a too-alluring prospect of loot, for anyone to bother with chasing the few fugitives who had vanished into the jungle.

Winter was sobbing and struggling. ‘Let me go! You can't leave them! You can't! There are children there - listen to them -
listen
! You coward - you
coward
!' She struck at him wildly, trying to break his hold.

Alex slapped her across the face with the flat of his palm. It was a hard blow and it jerked her back against a tree-trunk and effectually checked the torrent of words and her rising hysteria. ‘I may yet be more use alive than dead,' said Alex brutally. ‘Get those hoops off - hurry!' He released her wrist and stood waiting, breathing quickly and listening, his revolver in his hand.

The pain of the blow had made her head ring and Alex's curt voice did not permit of argument. She pulled up the voluminous poplin skirts and the frilled petticoat and unfastened the hooped crinoline with feverish haste, wincing and gasping at the sound of those distant appalling screams that seemed to tear thin scarlet gashes through the hot sunlit morning. She saw Alex's face flinch and stiffen but he made no move to return. He reloaded her revolver with steady hands and gave it back to her. ‘Come on!'

It was easier to move without the hooped skirt, though her dress had to be lifted up to prevent it trailing on the ground. But her shoes were not made for rough walking and she knew that they would not stand up to it for long. Something rustled in the shadows, and two women who had been crouching among a tangle of grass and creepers stood up, white-faced and breathing in short gasps. Lottie and Lou Cottar. And behind them, in a panting huddle on the ground, sat Mrs Holly.

‘
Winter
!' cried Lottie in a sob. She ran to Winter and clutched her, her eyes wide and glittering: ‘I thought - I thought— What happened? Why did they make me run? Why?
Why
?' Her voice rose to a scream and Winter, remembering the murderous rabble so short a distance behind them, spoke frantically: ‘Hush, Lottie! You must be quiet. Hush, dear!'

‘Why?' sobbed Lottie. ‘
Why
!'

Alex reached out and caught her, pressing her head against his breast and holding it there with one hand. His eyes were anxious and alert but his voice was neither. He spoke to Lottie in an entirely matter-of-fact tone that somehow
carried complete conviction: ‘We have to go to Meerut, Lottie. You want to see Edward, don't you? The carriage has broken down, you know, so I am afraid we must walk. We were only running to get out of the sun. You would not want to get sunstroke just as you are going to Meerut, would you? This is a short cut. And you must not make too much noise because - because I have a bad headache.'

Over Lottie's small head his eyes met the blaze of anger in Winter's. ‘How could you! How
could
you!' Her lips formed the words soundlessly. He looked away again and down at Lottie. The hysterical tension ebbed from Lottie's body and she lifted her head and smiled her sweet, dazed smile. ‘I didn't know. I'm sorry. Why, of course I want to see Edward! Mrs Holly did not tell me that we were going to Meerut, and I thought— Let us hurry!'