Shadow of the Moon (97 page)

Lou was silent because now that deliverance seemed so near at hand she was suddenly frightened again. Not of possible hardships, but of the shadowy spectres of Amanda's grandparents who might claim the child. All at once she knew that she did not want to leave the Gulab Mahal, as she had not wanted to leave the Hirren Minar. She was safe here, she and Amanda. She clutched the small, solemn red-headed creature tighter in her arms and the baby set up a protesting wail.

Lou and Mrs Hossack had taken the children away and left the moonlit roof to Alex and Winter, and for a little while only, Alex had forgotten the thunder of the guns.

The wind shifted in the night, and in the morning the cannonade was less easy to hear, and that day it came no nearer. But on the following day the guns were no longer a mile or so outside the city, but firing from within the city limits as the Highlanders and the Sikhs and the British and Indian Cavalry and Infantry under Havelock's command fought their way through the streets.

The gates of the Gulab Mahal were barred and barricaded and every shutter closed and bolted, and none stirred outside while the city shook to the savage din of battle. And as the sun sank, the wind blowing from the direction of the Residency brought with it a new sound, faint but unmistakable. A roar of cheering.

‘
They've got there
!' said Alex with a catch in his voice and a lunatic desire to cheer himself hoarse. ‘Listen to that! They've got there!'

‘They're safe,' said Lou, and wept.

They had got there at last. But the garrison of the Residency, though sure now of survival, had not been relieved after all. They had only been reinforced.
The regiments who had fought their way through the streets had been too badly mauled, and their losses had been too great for them to be able to do more than join the exhausted defenders in the Residency and to stand siege there themselves.

The tumult in the city died down and the stench of death rose from the streets like a tangible cloud to foul the air. And once again the familiar rattle of musketry-fire, punctuated more frequently now by the boom of guns, sounded from the direction of the Residency.

Alex waited for several days, gleaning what news he could from Dasim Ali, and from Rahim who had been into the bazaars. But from what they told him there seemed to be little chance of the situation developing into more than another stalemate, if not a retreat. The garrison was hampered by an inordinate proportion of women and children whose safety could not be jeopardized, and now that Havelock and Outram, with the relieving force, were also penned up in the Residency it seemed more likely that they would have to remain where they were until they in turn were relieved, since to fight their way out with the women and children would be no easy task, and would mean abandoning Lucknow and that indefensible position that had, miraculously and courageously, been defended for so long. They would have to retreat not only from Lucknow but from Oudh, and it might be many months before another and stronger force could be marched to attack and take the city.

Alex had talked for a long time with old Dasim Ali on the last evening of September, and afterwards he had gone down to the painted room and to Winter.

The light of the oil-lamp played upon the rose-coloured walls and the painted plaster birds and flowers as it had on the first night that he had seen that room, and once again it seemed to him that the trees swayed and the birds moved, and that the shadows made a mist under the curved ceiling so that he could not tell how high it was.

Winter was combing out the long waves of her hair, and he sat on the low Indian bed, as he had done that first night, and watched her; and did not speak.

After a moment she laid down the comb and turned towards him. The light of the lamp behind her fell upon his face but left her own in shadow, and the soft wavering flame threw an aureole about her, glinting on the long ripples of her black hair and outlining her small head.

She looked at him in silence, as she had done once before in that room; seeing in his face what it was that he had come to say. And once again he held out a hand to her, and she came to him and put her arms about him, standing between his knees with his head against her heart as she had stood in the dusk outside the Hirren Minar on the day that Lottie had died. Now, as then, he held her quite gently, leaning against her, and presently he said: ‘I can take you with me. There are troops at the Alam Bagh just outside the city. It will
not be too difficult or too dangerous to get you there. You can pass as an Indian. And once you were there you would be safe. After that it would only mean reaching Cawnpore, and then by river to Allahabad and Calcutta. If Havelock is here it means the road must be open.'

Winter said: ‘Would you come with me?' and knew the answer before she asked it.

She felt Alex's arms tighten about her. ‘To the Alam Bagh, my darling. Perhaps to Cawnpore.'

‘And after that?'

‘I - you would be safe then.'

Winter put up one hand and stroked his dark hair, pressing her fingers through it; pressing his head against her so that he should not lift it and see that she was crying. She said softly and quite steadily: ‘And you?'

Alex moved his head against her as though he were in pain. He said in a harsh, difficult voice: ‘I must go back to Lunjore.'

He felt her flinch, and said as though she had spoken: ‘I must, dear. I should never have left. There was so much that I could have done there - or tried to do. It - it is my work; my responsibility. It's my
own
district! And I ran away from it, because—'

‘Because you were saddled with three women,' said Winter with a break in her voice. ‘But you can't go back there now. Alex, you can't! They would only kill you. There wouldn't be anything you could do there alone - not now. You'd only be throwing your life away, and it isn't only yours - it's mine too. It's
mine
!'

Alex's arms were hard about her; he said: ‘I know, my heart. But it isn't true that there is nothing that I could do there now. And - and there is more than an even chance that I shall be safe. There are several of the talukdars who I think would stand by me. Safdar Beg will lend me men; I got his revenues back for him and he was grateful for that. And Tará Chand - oh, a dozen others. There is no one to keep order there now. But once they see someone in authority again it will quiet them and bring back order and sanity; give them the assurance that there is still a stable Government and a law that does not depend on the will or the whim of any individual who happens to be temporarily in power. That is what they need; peace and quiet and that assurance. It wasn't the villages, or even the city, that created the trouble. It was the sepoys, and they will have gone now. If I go back now I can— Dear heart, I must go back! Give me leave to go.'

Winter said: ‘And if I will not? Would you still go?'

‘I - I must. But I would go happier if I went with your leave.'

She said in a whisper, because she could not trust her voice not to break again: ‘Go with it, my love,' and felt something that had been strained and taut relax in his mind more than in his body.

He leaned his weight against her as though he were very tired, and the tears that she had wished to hide from him ran down her cheeks to her throat so
that they wet his face, and he felt them and tried to lift his head, but she held it closer and after a little while she said: ‘When are you going?'

‘Tonight. In an hour.'

She did not make any sound, but he felt the effort to control it shudder through her body, and knew what that effort had cost her. He said: ‘Can you be ready by then?'

She did not answer him at once, but her hand relaxed its pressure against his head and began to stroke his hair again, quite gently, and presently she said: ‘I am not going.'

He looked up then, quickly, and saw her face wet and sweet and calm above him. She smiled down at him, the soft, tremulous shadow of a smile, and laid her palm against the hard cheek that was wet with her own tears:

‘Dear, I could not go. They would send me away to Calcutta. I should be at the other end of India. I shall be nearer to you here, and far safer than you will be. Ameera will take care of me, and I shall be among friends. I was born in this room, and I have thought about it and loved it all my life. Perhaps your child will be born in it too. I will wait here for you.'

Alex said: ‘You don't understand, my heart. I can't let you stay. One day we shall attack this city, and take it. You don't know what that would mean, but I do. I have seen a city sacked. If you were here—'

Winter's hand moved from his cheek to his mouth, covering it so that he could not speak, and above it his eyes looked into hers steadily and for a long time. Then his lashes dropped and he kissed the warm palm that closed his mouth, and did not argue with her any more.

He had gone before midnight, slipping out by the narrow side door by which Carlyon and Lapeuta and Dobbie had left, and there had been only his wife and Dasim Ali to see him go.

Winter had stood pressed against the little iron-studded door and listened to the sound of his quick light footsteps dying out on the dusty road outside, and presently the night had swallowed up the sound, and old Dasim Ali had touched her on the arm and she had turned away.

She had cried again on the bed in the painted room after he had gone, and Ameera had comforted her. But in the morning it was the room that had comforted her most. She had woken to find it bright with the dawn, and as the sun rose and the familiar shadow crept across the floor and touched the bed on which she lay, peace and reassurance flowed back and filled her heart and her mind and her body. Nothing could hurt her while she was here. Alex would come back. She had only to wait.

51

Three of them left. Winter, Lou and Mrs Hossack. And the two small children; Jimmy Hossack and Lottie's daughter Amanda.

Mrs Hossack had been horrified and indignant when she had heard the news of Alex's departure, and had expressed herself strongly on the subject to Lou Cottar.

‘I cannot
understand
how Captain Randall could have brought himself to do such a thing. To desert his wife at a time like this. To escape himself and to leave her behind, alone and unprotected. Not to mention
us.
One would have thought that he would have remained here to protect us all.'

‘From what?' inquired Lou shortly. ‘We are perfectly safe here; and if a mob should break in, one man would not be much help.'

‘Well, I consider it very shocking in him,' said Mrs Hossack, ‘and I cannot conceive how he can have brought himself even to contemplate such a thing.'

‘He has an odd idea that duty should come before personal inclination,' said Lou drily. ‘He also has a peculiar sense of proportion and value, and imagines that three women, who are really as safe as they can hop e to be, are of less importance than the welfare of his district.'

‘Personally, I should have thought that the first duty of an Englishman was to protect women,' said Mrs Hossack indignantly.

‘I'm sure you would. It is a pity that so many of them would seem to agree with you,' said Lou acidly, and turned her back on her.

Mrs Hossack had preserved an offended silence for at least half the day, but towards evening Jimmy Hossack had been fretful and refused his food, and had later become feverish. He had grown steadily worse and Mrs Hossack had been frantic.

‘He is going to die!' wept Mrs Hossack hysterically, rocking herself to and fro and wringing her hands. ‘I know he will die! … with no doctor … no proper food … no medicines - this dreadful, horrible house! Oh Jimmy -
Jimmy
!'

Lou had slapped her. It had proved an efficacious remedy as far as Mrs Hossack was concerned, and Jimmy Hossack had not died. But he had lost a great deal of weight and did not regain it, and his recovery was so slow as to be scarcely perceptible.

Jimmy's illness had frightened Lou almost as much as it had terrified his mother. What if Amanda were to get ill? - really ill? They must get away! They
must
. Alex had said that a road must be open from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and Josh would be in Calcutta. Josh would not object to her keeping Amanda. Josh had never objected to anything that Lou did. He would
probably be amused at the idea, and might even one day come to look upon the child as being as much his own as she herself did. And she, Lou, had red hair too. If only the Englishes— Oh, to hell with the Englishes! She must get Amanda to safety. What was the Army doing? What was Havelock doing?

But Havelock, whose command had now been taken over by Sir James Outram, was still besieged in the Residency that he had hoped to relieve. And October came and went, and the air was cool now; the gardens bright with flowers and the early mornings sharp and chilly.

The news that Delhi had been recaptured by the British had reached the Gulab Mahal two days after Alex had left. Delhi had been taken, but the price had been high, for Nicholson was dead. He had been shot trying to rally his men in the attack on the city, and all that could die of him had died nine days later - leaving behind an imperishable legend and the echoes of those hooves that could be heard from Attock to the Khyber. ‘Nikal Seyn' was dead, and the men of the frontier who had fought at Delhi - Pathans, Multanis, Afghans - had wept above his grave, and many, who had cared nothing for the Raj and had given allegiance only to him, had gone back to their own country. ‘
There be many sahibs - but only one Nikal Seyn
…'

The year wore slowly on, and the ceaseless, familiar sound of musketry and gunfire from around the Residency still made a background to each day, and it was not until mid-November that once again the roar of guns and the din of battle rattled the rickety fabric of the Gulab Mahal as another British force fought its way towards a second relief of the Lucknow Residency, and once again the ugly tide of war surged through the narrow streets of the city.

Once again the gates of the pink palace were barred and barricaded; but fortune was with it, for it did not lie in the line of the advance, and the flood-tide of the street-fighting passed it by.

For a week gunfire and the crashing detonation of buildings being blown up shook Lucknow, but no one seemed to know how the battle went. The Residency had been relieved for the second time, but had Lucknow itself been captured by the British? None from the pink palace dared go out for news because the streets were not safe, and food ran short and there came a day when there was no milk for Amanda and Jimmy Hossack.

Havelock died in that month, and on the day after his death word had been whispered in the dusk at the barred gate of the Gulab Mahal that the
Jung-i-lat Sahib
, Sir Colin Campbell, was going to retreat from Lucknow and fall back once more upon Cawnpore, and that the evacuation would take place that very night, and in great secrecy. The women and children were to leave in carts and
dhoolis
at midnight while the city slept; stealing out under cover of darkness and making for the Alam Bagh, which was strongly held by the British.

Ameera had brought the news to Winter. ‘My husband and Dasim Ali,'
said Ameera, ‘say that if it be thy wish, it can be arranged that thou and the two women with the children go also. There are
dhoolis
here, and men to carry them, and they will join with the other mem-
log
at a place that is known to them, and take thee to safety. But it must be decided swiftly, for already it is dark.'

Winter had smiled lovingly at her. ‘I will tell the others. It may be that they will choose to go. But I will stay here - unless thou and thy husband wish me to be gone. And if that be so, then thou wilt have to send me away by force!'

‘That we shall never do,' said Ameera, embracing her. ‘Is this not the house in which thou wast born? Go and tell thy friends to make ready if they would go.'

They had gone.

Mrs Hossack had tried to persuade Winter to go with them, and even Lou had urged her to leave. ‘I know you are safe here now,' said Lou, ‘and that you will be happier here than in Allahabad or Calcutta, or wherever they send us. But it isn't safe to stay. Can't you see that even if they are retreating this time, they will come again? Lucknow will be taken in the end - it's got to be! And when it is, the fighting will be far worse - a hundred times worse - than it has been this time, or the time before. The place may be sacked. Anything may happen. You can't risk it, Winter. You have the child to think of.'

‘It is Alex's child,' said Winter. ‘Alex knew that Lucknow would be taken, but he did not make me leave. Don't you see, Lou, that even if I wished to go I could not? Everyone in this house has risked their lives to save ours. And when they took us in they had no idea of profiting from it. We owe them a debt; a very great one. If I stay here, and I am here when the attack comes, the fact that I am in this house may save it. I could not leave … Alex knew that.'

Lou had wasted no more words. She had, somewhat unexpectedly, kissed Winter; and even more unexpectedly, there had been tears in her eyes. They had smiled at each other with affection and respect, their hands holding tightly for a moment, and had kissed again, saying nothing because there was so much to say - and yet so little that need be said. And then Lou had gone. Lou, Amanda, Mrs Hossack, Jimmy.

The gate creaked shut behind them and the bars and bolts grated hurriedly back into place, and the shuffling footsteps of the
dhooli
-bearers faded and were swallowed up by the night as Alex's quick, light ones had been.

Sir Colin Campbell's army - Havelock's army - retreated from Lucknow, taking with them the women and children and all who remained of the gallant garrison who had held out so stubbornly and for so long, and leaving behind them the lonely dead and the empty shell of the Residency where a tattered Union Jack still fluttered in the dawn wind above the broken roof. And in the Gulab Mahal, the little pink stucco palace in Lucknow city, only Winter
remained of the thirteen fugitives who had been taken in and given shelter on a hot night in July.

Once again the tide of war drew out of Lucknow leaving the ruin and the wreckage behind it, and there were no more sounds of the siege. Only the doves and the crows and the parrots again, and the chattering squirrels and the hum of the city from behind the high wall that shut in the Rose Palace.

There was firing still, but not from the Residency. It was further away now, from the Alam Bagh - the ‘Garden of the World' - a walled and fortified royal garden some two miles outside Lucknow, where Sir Colin Campbell had left a force under General Outram to hold at least one outpost within sight of the city.

The Maulvi of Faizabad, the best of the generals that the mutineer armies had produced, attacked the British there, and cut their communications with Cawnpore. All through the succeeding months the Alam Bagh was attacked again and again, as the Residency had been. But unlike the Residency it was not a besieged garrison holding out against insuperable odds, but a strongpost that defied capture and waited for the day when it would act as the spearhead of the final advance upon Lucknow.

There was no word of Carlyon and the two men who had gone with him: or of Alex. But the bearers of the
dhoolis
had returned, saying that the memsahibs and their children had reached the Alam Bagh in safety, and had been sent forward with all the other mem-
log
to Cawnpore. So Lou and Mrs Hossack at least were safe, and Winter hoped that Lou would not find that escape had robbed her of Amanda. Lou deserved Amanda.

The year drew to its close, but the mutiny still raged. Men still fought and died, and in Lucknow the mutineers dug defences and built barricades in preparation for the attack that they knew could not be long delayed. For the make-believe Mogul, Bahadur Shah's, brief, soap-bubble dream of Empire had vanished with the fall of Delhi: Dundu Pant, the Nana Sahib, was a fugitive, and many of the strongholds that the insurgents had won were once more in British hands.

But within the faded, pink-washed walls of the Gulab Mahal the days passed peacefully, and Winter sank into the life of the Rose Palace and became part of it - as she had been part of it in the long-ago days when Juanita and Aziza Begum had been alive and Winter herself a small, black-haired child playing with the painted plaster birds in the room that had been Sabrina's.

The inmates of the palace frequently forgot that she was not one of them by birth, and she spoke and thought and dreamt in the vernacular as she had done as a child. She busied herself with the same household tasks, and was scolded by Mumtaz and instructed in the mysteries of drying and preserving fruits and spices, of making jasmine oil and soap made from powdered gram, or preparing
surma
- the black ore of antimony used for beautifying the eyes. There were few idle hours in the Gulab Mahal, and there was always Ameera,
and Ameera's small sons to play with, and other and older children to fly kites with on the roof and to tell stories to, and their mothers to gossip and laugh with.

Twice a day, morning and evening, Winter would go alone to the roof-top where Alex had lived, and look out across the tree-tops and the lovely battered city, towards Lunjore.

‘He is not dead,' she told Ameera. ‘If he were I should feel it; here, in my heart.'

But there were times when she was not so sure; when terror would suddenly overtake her and she would think of him lying dead or dying in Lunjore - tortured or wounded or sick. And when those black times came upon her she would run to her own room, and the room, as it had always been, was a talisman and a charm that could reassure her and make her believe that all would be well. She had only to lay her hand on the gay, worn curves of Firishta, and stroke his plaster feathers, to feel calm flow back to her as though his touch were indeed magic. Alex would come back.