Shadow of the Moon (78 page)

Alex shut his eyes for a brief moment, then he released her and said quietly: ‘Are there any more of you?'

Mrs Cottar shook her head and answered him in a whisper: ‘Only the three of us. I think there are others hiding in the nullah, and some of them ran on down the path.' Her face was chalk-white except where a thorn had scratched it deeply, and her hair had tumbled down her back. Her smart morning-dress - she too had discarded her hooped underskirt - was ripped and torn, and she was trembling violently. But her eyes and her voice were steady.

‘They'll have to take their chance,' said Alex curtly. ‘We can't wait.' He glanced at Lottie and said: ‘She'll have to take those hoops off. And you'd better do something about your shoes, or we shan't get far. Tie 'em with strips off your skirts - we can spare a few minutes. I don't think they'll look for us yet, they have too much to—' He did not finish the sentence but knelt swiftly to help Mrs Cottar, who was already ripping the frills from her petticoat with quick unsteady fingers. ‘You've got a pistol, I see. Can you use it?'

‘Yes,' said Mrs Cottar briefly, and sat down to tie the strips of cloth round her shoes, binding them strongly about the ankle. Alex performed a similar office for Lottie while Winter, having tied her own slippers with a ruffle torn from her petticoat, coaxed Lottie out of her crinoline and turned to Mrs Holly who had not moved.

‘Hurry, Mrs Holly - you must take off your hoops. Let me help you—'

‘It's no use, dearie,' said Mrs Holly hoarsely. ‘I can't go no further.'

‘Of course you can!' began Winter, but Lou Cottar, who had heard the words, whipped round. She said in a harsh whisper: ‘So he got you? I - I thought—'

‘Yes, dearie,' said Mrs Holly.

Winter dropped to her knees beside the huddled figure among the thick grass. ‘What is it? - what is it? I don't understand. Get up, Mrs Holly - please! We have to go.'

Lou Cottar said: ‘It was a man in the servants' quarters. He had a musket and he fired at us as we went past. I shot him. I thought he'd missed—'

Alex pushed Winter to one side and knelt to put an arm about Mrs Holly, lifting her a little. His hand touched a warm wetness that there was no mistaking and he saw the grey look on the plump, homely face, and recognized it.

There was a sudden renewed clamour of shots and shouting from the direction of the Residency and the screaming of someone in intolerable pain, muffled by the distance but still horribly audible in the stillness of the morning. Lottie flinched and began to breathe quickly again, and Mrs Holly said urgently: ‘Go on, sir. Make 'em go on. It ain't safe to wait. Get the ladies away. You can't do nothing for me. I know that. Go on quick.'

Alex laid her back very gently and stood up, and at the sight of his face Winter drew in her breath in a harsh gasp and caught at his sleeve. ‘No, Alex! No. You can't leave her - you can't. They'll look for us, and they'll find her. And if they didn't she would— Mrs Holly, please get up -
please
! We can carry you - we—'

‘It's no good, dearie,' said Mrs Holly. ‘I'm too ‘eavy - an' too bad ‘urt. An' there's Miss Lottie to think of. I don't know as ‘ow I could look ‘er ma in the face, or ‘er Mr Edward neither, if I was to let 'em get ‘er. You go on, dearie … I shall be all right soon.'

Winter flung her arms about Mrs Holly, holding her tightly; feeling, as Alex had felt, the warm tide that soaked out upon the grass. She looked up at Alex and said jerkily: ‘You and Lou can take care of Lottie. I'm going to stay here.'

‘That you're not!' said Mrs Holly with sudden energy, the instincts of one who had been a children's nurse in her day rising to the surface. ‘You'll do what you're told, Miss Winter!' She looked up into the young, drawn face above her and her voice softened: ‘I won't ‘ave it, dearie. I shall be all right. I ‘aven't been ‘appy since Alfred went. It'll be a pleasure to know …' The words were coming with more difficulty and she fought for breath.

Alex glanced back uneasily in the direction of the Residency. He put out a hand as though he would have pulled Winter away, and then clenched it and let it fall; knowing that she would not come for him. Mrs Holly said urgently: ‘An' there's Miss Lottie. She knows you. She'd be that scared without you. ‘Er ma was good to you. You owe ‘er something. Get along now, dearie - hurry now.'

Winter looked back at Lottie who was staring at them with bewilderment and a renewal of panic in her face. She looked up at Alex with wide, imploring eyes and he shook his head in answer to the question they asked. Her cheeks were suddenly wet with tears and she bent and kissed Mrs Holly, released her and stood up.

‘That's a good girl,' approved Mrs Holly. ‘Don't you fret.' She looked at Alex and her lips moved. He bent swiftly. ‘Take me shoes,' whispered Mrs
Holly. ‘She'll need 'em. Stout they are. Not like those flimsy … I can't reach … Alex turned without a word and removed the stout, sensible shoes and thrust them into his pocket. He jerked the revolver from its holster, looked at it for a fractional moment and then laid it beside her on the grass.

‘No, sir,' whispered Mrs Holly. ‘You'll maybe need it, and I won't.'

‘You may,' said Alex in a hard voice.

‘I'd rather not, sir. I might use it if they come, an' … an' I don't ‘old with it. The Commandments is plain. The Lord didn't say kill 'em if they kills you. ‘E jus' said …
don't
! I know it's different for you, sir … an' if I could ‘a killed to save Alfred, I know as I would ‘av done. An' … an' then you see … I might be tempted ter use it on meself, sir, an' that wouldn't be right neither. Take it—'

Alex picked it up again. He lifted one of the rough, work-worn hands, kissed it swiftly and rose to his feet. He knew that she had no chance; he knew that she might take hours to die; but he had other things to think of and he had to reach the river. He would have shot her himself and taken her death on his conscience, but he did not dare, because there was no knowing who might hear that shot and follow it up.

He swung round on the three white-lipped women who watched him and said savagely: ‘Don't stand there! For God's sake get on - quickly.' He thrust them ahead of him into the hot, rustling grass and the shadows of the
runt
trees, and did not look back.

Two and a half hours later they had covered less than four miles. The intolerable heat, the absence of trodden paths and the necessity of forcing their way through high grass and scrub, raging thirst and the unsuitable shoes and garments of the women had combined to slow them down to a mere matter of keeping moving.

Lottie had struggled on manfully, supported at first by Winter or Lou Cottar, while Alex went ahead, but it had soon become obvious that she could not keep up with them, and eventually Alex had carried her. Lottie, even seven months pregnant, weighed astonishingly little, but the lightest weight becomes intolerable after a time, and Alex's muscles ached and the blood drummed in his ears and he had been forced to stop and lay her down at shorter and shorter intervals.

It was Winter who said suddenly, watching his grim, exhausted face as he rested for a moment, sitting with closed eyes and his back to a tree-trunk, ‘Where are we going? What is it you want to do?'

Alex opened his eyes and looked at her and his face was suddenly bleak. But for her and Lottie and Lou Cottar he could have turned back and tried to get a horse from the stables and make a detour by the plain, and he might still have reached the bridge in time. But for them he could still reach it in an hour. The bridge was ten miles by road, but barely half that through the jungle, and he had gone this way on foot often enough before, though the
jungle was thick and there were no paths. But for Winter - Winter and Alice Batterslea - he would not be here at all … ‘
the safety of women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all
…'

He said in a parched whisper: ‘I know this jungle … it runs to the river … there's a ruin … use it for
shikar
… mile above the bridge. Put the stuff there … weeks ago.' He closed his eyes again.

‘What stuff? What stuff, Alex?' Winter knelt beside him, shaking him.

‘Gunpowder,' said Alex without opening his eyes.

‘
Gunpowder
? What for?'

‘Blow up the bridge,' said Alex briefly.

Across his body Winter's eyes met Lou Cottar's. She had never liked Lou Cottar, but now something in the older woman that matched something in herself made a sudden bond between them. They looked at each other for a long moment and it was as if each of them had asked the other a question, and answered it.

Winter looked back at Alex. ‘How much further is it?'

‘Hmm? Oh - mile. Get there soon.' He moved his shoulders uneasily and dragged himself to his feet.

Winter said with a break in her voice: ‘Alex, you fool! You should have left us!'

Alex said: ‘You don't know these jungles. You'd have gone round and round in circles until—' He shrugged his shoulders uneasily and winced with the pain of the movement.

‘Well, we are all right now. We'll bring Lottie. Go on as quick as you can, but - but mark the way so we won't miss it. If it's only a mile we'll be able to manage that.'

Alex did not argue. He looked at Lottie who lay asleep with her head in Lou Cottar's lap, and then at Lou Cottar and Winter. They were exhausted from heat and thirst and the slow miles they had walked. Their faces and hands were scratched by thorn-scrub and sharp-edged grasses; their feet were blistered - Lou was already wearing Mrs Holly's shoes - and their clothing was torn and soaked with sweat. But their eyes were calm and they looked back at him steadily. Two pairs of eyes, so very different; so entirely alike.

He said: ‘Don't rest too long or you'll find you can't move. Keep moving, even if it's slowly. I'll mark the way. Hide if you hear anyone, and don't fire unless as a last resort. The sound of a shot carries.' He turned away, and the high grass and the thorn-scrub, the choking bamboo, the
runi
trees and lantana and the chequered shadows closed behind him, and he was gone.

They listened to the sounds of movement fade and die, and all at once the jungle was intolerably still. Nothing seemed to stir in that hot, breathless stillness; no twig or leaf or dry spear of grass. There seemed to be nothing alive in it except themselves.

A soft, monotonous ticking crept into the silence and Winter looked down and saw that it was Alex's watch which must have fallen from his pocket. She reached out and picked it up and the broken chain clinked as she lifted it… Alex must have forgotten to wind it, for the hands pointed at ten minutes to eleven.

The watch ticked gently. Ten minutes to eleven. Only ten minutes to eleven! It had been just on seven o'clock when the first news of the mutiny of the 93rd had taken Colonel Moulson from the Residency. Less than half past seven when Captain Wardle had ridden in on a wounded horse with his shattered arm and shoulder roughly bound with one of Alex's bungalow curtains and Alam Din running at his stirrup, bringing Alex's message warning them to leave the house and take refuge in the jungle. The warning had been disregarded, as had all Alex's warnings, for the native gunners were still at their posts and the police were loyal, but - so argued Captain Wardle and those men who had been detailed to remain in the Residency - if they should see the women and children leaving it might unsettle them and create an atmosphere of distrust and panic which must be avoided at all costs. So they had stayed; and less than quarter of an hour later they had heard the roar of the explosion as young Eyton and the five men of the guard from the 93rd who had remained loyal had blown up the Magazine, and themselves with it.

It had not been eight o'clock when Alex had burst into the crowded Residency and told them to run - and to keep running. Surely that had been a year ago … a lifetime … an aeon ago? How many people had died in the hour that preceded that? In the quarter of an hour that had followed it? How many people were dying now? How many were hiding in the jungle like themselves, and how long would they - and those others - be able to stay alive? Ten minutes to eleven …

Lou Cottar spoke in a whisper. A whisper that was not on account of the sleeping Lottie, but enforced upon her by the deathly stillness of the jungle: ‘He was right. We'd better keep moving. We can follow him fairly easily if we go now, but the grass stands up again so quickly.'

Lottie rolled her head in Mrs Cottar's lap and muttered: ‘Water - please. So thirsty.'

The two women looked at each other and looked away quickly; their own throats parched.

‘We shouldn't have thrown our hoops away,' said Lou Cottar getting stiffly to her feet. ‘We could have made a hammock out of them. Oh well - too late now. It will have to be my dress. It may hold.' She slipped out of it as she spoke, and they folded it and tied it with strips torn from Winter's petticoat and made a rough-and-ready hammock in which they laid Lottie. It was a precarious enough conveyance and put an intolerable strain on them, but they managed it somehow, with the aid of a makeshift harness that took the weight on their shoulders.

It was an agonizingly slow performance, but they kept moving. The sun scorched them and blistered Lou's arms and face - Winter's, more inured to the sun of late, suffered less. Once something moved ahead of them that was not a shadow, and Winter, who was leading, stopped with a gasp of fear as a tiger moved into the trodden track and stood still, staring at them. ‘What is it?' whispered Lou, who could not see. Winter did not reply, not daring to move or speak; barely daring to breathe. The tiger too did not stir, until suddenly Lottie moaned and said: ‘Water!' and at the sound a growl rumbled in the great cat's throat, and Winter heard Lou draw a hissing breath of comprehension. The creature's tail began to twitch in the dry grass as they stared at each other for what seemed like an hour, though it could not have been more than a minute or two at most. She could feel the sweat trickling down her face and running in little cold rivulets down her neck; and then the tiger backed away and the grass closed over the place where it had stood.