A Far Horizon (24 page)

The Chief Magistrate joined the Governor on the balcony of the Council chamber, where Drake and members of the Council of War stood silently watching the nawab’s advance through spyglasses. It was all as the Chief Engineer had foretold, everyone now
remembered
. The grandiose homes about the fort provided the cover the enemy sought; they moved forward almost invisibly to claim each new house. The Council of War, from their lookout post upon the balcony, only became aware a new house had fallen when Siraj Uddaulah’s flag was hoisted. Soon the nawab’s pennant was seen flying from Dumbleton’s house in Rope Walk, and from its flat rooftop his soldiers fired down on the East Battery with disastrous effect.

The morning wore on, and with it the struggle for White Town’s houses. The Governor and the Chief Magistrate were stretched as never before, rushing between the Council chamber and their lookout post upon the balcony, planning new strategy on the wing.
Men were ordered to move across The Park to drive the enemy out of Dumbleton’s house. Then Minchin’s palatial house fell to the nawab, as did Captain Clayton’s. The nawab’s troops cheered as they took a house; the Fort William troops cheered as they took it back.

The Chief Magistrate became increasingly anxious about the fate of his own great home, but there was little he could do. In the Council chamber, argument without resolution frittered the hours away. The Council of War looked down with growing consternation on the refugees packing the parade ground, loud with panic and pleas for food. They obstructed action and inhibited thought. Nothing was helped by the whistle of cannon balls alive in the air about the fort. When once more one fell over the walls of the fort and landed amongst the refugees, terror became uncontrollable. The Governor and the Chief Magistrate looked down in horror but could think of nothing to do apart from sending three European soldiers to cart away the dead.

‘We must prepare to evacuate our ladies immediately. Somehow it must be done,’ Holwell decided, the muscles of his jaw clenched in new determination.

N
othing now mattered to Emily Drake. When she looked from the balcony at the crowded parade ground, all she heard was the moaning of children. Above the distress, Harry’s small cry seemed to float on the night from where she had been forced to leave him. She had slipped from the surface of reality.

At first she could not believe it. She had been sure that Harry took shallow breaths sleeping as deeply as usual. For a while she had sat beside the cradle, her hair and clothes still damp from her dip in the river, sure he would awake soon. She did not see the wet nurse go, but later, when no trace could be found of her, Emily became for a while hysterical, questions thrusting themselves upon her. Had Harry died silently, freeing the woman? Or had she put him down like a stray kitten in order to be free? It was impossible now to know and the doctor could not tell.

‘Be thankful you knew the baby no longer than a few weeks. The pain is less, I assure you.’ Lady Russell, well-meaning, consoled from experience. Emily had wanted to strike her. Suddenly, then, there were other women about her, tearing the child from her arms, laying him out, asking for clean clothes. They would not let her near him, even though she pleaded. She had wanted to prepare him herself; she did not want strangers to touch him. Instead she was dragged away.
Someone peeled off her damp dress and she saw glances exchanged. Her arms were thrust into a fresh gown; her hair was dried and brushed. Then she was forced to sit silently in a chair by the window while they busied themselves with the baby. He was small, there was little to do, she could not understand why they took so long. She sat dry-eyed and did not cry and knew they found this strange. She heard someone whisper that this was not normal; she was conscious again of conspiratorial glances passing between them. It was impossible to explain about Jane or the shadow of the wet nurse’s dead child that still pressed heavily upon her. The women spoke of the will of God. How could she tell them that God had no part in this death, that it was all to do with Jane?

Roger came and stayed to arrange the funeral details. His eyes rested coolly on her and she knew later that she would hear from him about her visit to the river. For now his impatience centred upon the child, who had died at such an inconvenient moment.

‘He must be buried at once, for when the nawab attacks how will we get to the cemetery?’ This was all he said, although he patted her hand and stayed a while by her side. It was clear that Harry’s death did not affect him unduly; things of larger importance now weighed on him.

‘You are young, there will be others,’ he said lightly, and for the first time she actively hated him. These words were repeated in one way or another by everyone she met.

In accordance with the Governor’s order, arrangements proceeded at an indecent pace. A tiny coffin appeared from nowhere, as if it had waited for this moment, and within an hour they set out under parasols into the hot morning. Few people accompanied them on the short journey out of Fort William to that third and silent section of Calcutta. It was as she wanted. She could not have borne the curious looks prying deep into her soul. The iron gates of the cemetery swung back, creaking on stiff hinges. Before her, the town of ponderous mausoleums, weathered black, stood barring her way like an army of dark-robed giants at the entrance to the underworld.
They crowded before her, as if waiting to take the offering she brought. From this point she could no longer follow her child on his journey. That he must pass into a dark and unknown land alone struck her cruelly. Roger and the Chief Magistrate carried the tiny casket and she walked behind, to the very threshold of the world that would take him. In spite of the Chaplain’s prayers, she sensed no one there to guide him; he must find his way alone. A hot wind scorched her cheeks, caking her lips with dust. The breeze soughed through trees; leaves rustled, disturbing bats in their sleep. Above the raw wound in the earth waiting to receive the casket, she saw the bats hanging like loosely furled umbrellas in the branches of a tamarind tree. That such creatures should now be Harry’s companions grieved her painfully. The Chaplain hurried through his duty, glancing anxiously at times in the direction of the nawab’s camp. Soon the tiny casket was lowered into the grave and they returned to Fort William. Soon Roger, the Chief Magistrate and the Chaplain disappeared again to the Council chamber. Emily was left with the empty cradle and for a while the company of Lady Russell.

*

Now, in the rocking chair before the balcony of bougainvillaea, Emily Drake looked towards the cemetery and wondered if the wisp of cloud trailing low in the sky carried the spirit of the child. Loneliness consumed her. Even Parvati was gone.

She no longer blamed Roger for deserting her. What could he know of a woman’s life? A man, from birth to death, seemed to remain unchanged. His life ran along a single progressive line; nothing cleaved his soul from his body. He could leave his seed where he wished and know nothing of its growing. It was not like that for her. Something had grown within her that could never be uprooted. Her child might die, all her children might die, but nothing could take that knowledge from her. She had carried the child for nine long months under her heart, and under her heart he would stay.

Restlessness drove her from her chair out on to the balcony. In the
distance, Black Town was nothing but a charred and flattened land now. Surviving cattle gathered at sooty water holes. The roasted carcasses of animals had been cleaned to the bone overnight by jackals and vultures and now reflected the sun like chips of
chunam.
Emily stared at the seared landscape, as if she could find some meaning of her own in its brutal annihilation. The morning grew before her and the sun blazed on her face, scorching her scalp, burning her wrists as if to cauterise her wound. In the distance the sounds of musket and cannon fire growing louder were but the ragged notes of a dream. Beyond Fort William’s walls, the world had become unreal. The real world was carried inside her. The hot wind blew in an angry rush: the bougainvillaea stirred, the jasmine tightened its petals. The wind rattled through the green louvred shutters of Governor’s House and hissed its papery words in her ear.

She looked again over the walls of Fort William to the place where she had left her child. Amongst the dry and dusty trees she glimpsed the dark, weathered heads of the mausoleums. In the branches of the tamarind the hot wind must rock the bats as they hung upon their perches. Lizards scuttled about, snakes sought the coolness of water. Would Jane and the wet nurse’s child, unknown, unnamed, hound Harry on his journey, hungry for his tiny soul? Would Parvati be there beside him, as she had been in life? Already Emily sensed these shadowy beings weaving about her. How could she leave Harry to their ghostly ministrations? Her hand tightened on the balcony; her body stiffened against the balustrade. In the sky, vultures wheeled and she followed their silent, hypnotic spiral, homing in on death. If she spread her arms she was sure she too could fly. She had only to dare, only to trust. The wind would take hold of her, buoying her up, willing her after her child, as Demeter had followed Persephone to bring her out of Hades. She held her arms wide, gave a cry and was answered by a hundred voices.

The sound returned her abruptly to the paltry brick of the balcony. Beneath the parapet, Governor’s House fell away to the parade ground and the sea of refugees. The people of Black Town
looked up at her as she stood with her head flung back and her arms held open. They shifted uneasily as she leaned forward and shifted again as she leaned back, as if the movement of her body had its root deep within them. Looking down at the upturned faces, Emily felt she stood on a stage. Her audience waited for an extravagant gesture. She gripped the rail harder then, as if she would pull herself up upon it, but something stopped her. She began to scour the faces below. And at last she found the thing she searched for and knew immediately why she had not jumped. In the midst of the crowd she saw the girl’s face, eyes fastened intently on her.

Sati stood alone, a circle of space around her, and did not move as she stared at the Governor’s wife. Emily Drake drew back from the balustrade. The hot rasp of the wind seemed to die in her ears. Her thoughts became still. The girl waited for her. And she knew she must journey towards her, just as the child in his unseen world must continue on his way without her. She grew quiet then and sat down again in the chair beside the empty crib. All she saw now were the girl’s eyes upon her still, drawing her down to the square. For a while she resisted, unsure of the future, unsure of herself. Then, at last, she stood up and made her way down the stairs.

Now, when she entered the parade ground, people drew back as if knowing already who it was she sought. Eventually, in a far corner of the square, she arrived at the Devi Ashram.

Even before she reached the place where the God Woman resided, messengers came out to greet her. A toothless crone with a basket of dried grasses and vegetable scraps. An albino, pale as the pink moon at sunset, with rabbity eyes and a skull of corn-coloured stubble. A horde of dancing children pushed about her, chanting. The messengers steered her on until she came before the girl, who stared silently at her. Guardians stood beside her, an immense-bodied woman and a small, wiry man in a turban. The foxy mother was nowhere to be seen; the girl now stood alone. And perhaps had always stood alone, Emily realised, only she had not been able to see it.

She had come on an impulse and did not know now what to do. She tried to explain about the death of the child. The man in the turban appeared to understand some English. He turned back to the crowd to interpret her words. Immediately there was sympathy; the women of the ashram drew close about her. They pressed her hands in sympathy to let her know they understood her pain, that they too had watched their children die. Emily felt their sympathy and took more comfort from these strangers than from anyone in Fort William. She sat down amongst them, conscious of their curiosity. A woman touched her hair, another felt the cloth of her dress.

‘I have come for Jane. I want you to contact Jane.’ She turned to Sati, but the girl only smiled in a vacant way.

‘The Goddess has not returned to her. We are waiting for the Goddess,’ the man explained, seeing Emily’s confusion. Sati’s eyes were now closed in deep meditation. As contact with the girl did not seem possible, Emily made her way back to the high-ceilinged rooms of Governor’s House, where once more she would be alone.

T
he evening came down upon Fort William like the shutting of a door. With the dusk, the sound of cannon and musket fire abruptly disappeared. One moment it resounded about Fort William, and the next only the muttering of adjutant storks was heard, preparing for the night. The torching of Black Town had produced a dearth of perches for these large birds, who preferred the stability of masonry to the flimsy branches of trees. The sudden influx of birds into Fort William, along with the refugees, had done nothing to alleviate the multiple pressures within the fort. The crows were as numerous as always, undeterred by catastrophe, but the preponderance of fiery explosions had not only terrified the birds but also alarmed the monkeys in the jungle. Hordes of these creatures had made for the sanctuary of the fort. They battled with the storks to sit upon walls, and screamed in agitation. They showed no fear of the refugees and copulated shamelessly when not ridding each other of lice. Rats had come up from beneath the fort to further plague the fort.

Worst of all for everyone was the fight with all these creatures for food. Storks strutted about, crows dived audaciously, while monkeys looped down snatching at morsels or rummaged about amidst sleeping bodies. The small quantities of stale
chapati
, dry biscuits or
rice that had been scooped up in the stampede to the fort were, if not already finished, being eked out in the most pitiful way. That these few crumbs must now be consumed before a hungry zoo was for some the last straw. Fighting broke out amongst the refugees. Fear, starvation and the heat began to drive people mad. Children died, a man slit his throat, a nephew killed his uncle. Dysentery added to this toll.

In the garrison, things were no better. The want of provisions and the fatigue of battle caused a mutinous situation. The arrack and toddy in the liquor store had been looted by the Dutch mercenaries and the half-caste Portuguese. The Chaplain’s store of claret and Madeira had also been found and ransacked. Drunkenness was rife and the Dutch mercenaries were rumoured to be hunting for women amongst the refugees. Lurid stories were passed around of young Indian girls being raped.

In the Devi Ashram, the severity of the situation was brought constantly before them. Without food, and forced to peer excessively at death and violence, people thought all the more of God. A
never-ending
queue of desperate souls braved the sun to touch the feet of the God Woman. For many, her presence in Fort William was the only thing that made the siege tolerable. It was not everyone who, even once in a lifetime, could come so near a deity. Everyone understood that circumstances must be of the most extreme to entice a god to earth. This was the view of the old men who had sat on their string beds under the trees in the peaceful days before Siraj Uddaulah. This group had taken up residence in the Devi Ashram and now served the God Woman devotedly. Before the enemy surrounded the fort, one old man had ambled out and returned with hanks of green banana. Another collected coconuts, a third produced some medicinal herbs, others stood as bodyguards around the Devi Ashram. Ancient though they were, the number and irritability of these men made them a force to be reckoned with. Pilferers and undesirables kept their distance.

For Govindram, incarceration in the fort gave him access to
Omichand. He had not been able to enter the fort after Omichand’s arrest but could now visit him every day. The conditions in which his master and the nobleman Kishindas were held in the Black Hole had come as a shock to him. Unaware that Omichand was still ignorant of the death of his women and children, the first thing Govindram had done when he saw his master was to offer his commiseration. Omichand sat down, dumbstruck, and began to wail and tear at his clothes. Govindram had stood outside the Black Hole, peering into the place through the bars, helpless to do more than beg Omichand to remember God. He knew that once the enormity of the shock wore off, and Omichand was re-established again in his life, other women would be found and new children quickly made.

‘It is all the work of Hatman Holwell. The nobleman’s treasure also he has taken,’ Omichand roared.

The fat merchant’s misery was greatly compounded by his need for food. Govindram had tried to gather some scraps for his master, but Jaya and Mohini put a stop to this.

‘For what are you feeding that elephant? Is not the Goddess of more value than he? And what of the children who are here with us, do not they deserve first to be fed?’ Jaya enquired.

‘He will see us all dead from starvation, but that elephant must be kept alive,’ Mohini admonished in agreement with Jaya.

Govindram returned empty-handed to Omichand. If he could not offer food, he could lend an eye on the world to the merchant. His day then quickly picked up purpose as he divided his time between the fat merchant and the Devi Ashram.

Sati sat, as instructed by her grandmother and Govindram, under a ragged canopy that had been hastily constructed from an old
lungi.
The sun, filtering through the dirty muslin, gave off the scent of warm cloth, but at night its pale shroud obscured her view of the stars. About her the ashram slept. Pagal, the albino, had stationed himself at her feet, and neither his wife nor his children were able to tear him away. Day and night, the itinerant vegetable woman shadowed Jaya and slept beside her. A goat had nibbled at her basket,
now empty at last of its tired vegetables. The goatherd’s small son, cut adrift from his family in the fire, had taken refuge with the goat and her kid in the Devi Ashram. The vegetable woman’s anger at the goat’s audacity had been overlooked before the value of the creature’s milk at this difficult time. The fruit stall man and the seller of spices slept beside their women, but their children had joined the children of the wives of the half-caste Portuguese soldiers. All these infants lay together in a large group while their mothers formed another. Only Sati lay awake, savouring the solitude. To be the nucleus of so much veneration had become a weight. Her every need was anticipated, her every action watched. Where once dismissal had isolated her, attention now cut her adrift.

She lay with her arms behind her head and stared up at the sky. The moon had disappeared to work its transformation. The stars might blaze as usual, but their impetus was gone; the world had been left in darkness. To what solitary chamber had the moon withdrawn in order to seek rebirth? Worst of all Durga too had disappeared. Everywhere she searched, Sati was met with silence. The shadows lay empty. Leaves curled dustily against the sun, lizards scuttled to hide in the cracks of walls, but Durga was not to be found. In the ashram the devotees waited. Sati proceeded through her circumscribed day, a vessel for the emotions of others, but without Durga, she was without her guide. At times panic overwhelmed her. Above her the sky appeared without colour, and nothing in her thrived.

The darkness was intense. Only the candlelit windows of
Governor’s
House spread a meagre light upon the parade ground. Sati scoured those windows with even greater diligence but could not see the pale face of the Governor’s wife. She remembered her just that day, perched high upon the balcony as if she would jump to freedom. The Governor’s wife appeared to live in a captured state. Sati could not explain what drew her to the Englishwoman. Except that it seemed Emily Drake, like herself, had begun a journey towards an unknown destination.

The moans and stirrings of countless women and children came to
her in the night, filling her with new restlessness. The sounds moved through her and the scent of the river blew upon the hot wind. And as if it blew to her from a great distance, she seemed to hear the echo of Durga’s voice carried upon the breeze. Sati stared into the darkness and heard Durga call again. Her heart leaped and at once she stood up, stepping around her sleeping devotees, following the sound to the river. No guards were about as she slipped down the steps to the wharf.

Immediately, the coolness of the water and its thick animal smell wrapped about her. The night vibrated with the hollow drumming of bullfrogs from the muddy bank. In the distance, from the camp of Siraj Uddaulah, came the trumpeting of elephants, the roll of a drum, a voice, a song. She could smell the movement of change and it frightened her. Within herself, too, there had been a change. All her life she had reached out, seeking a place in which to dissolve, to become a part of something whole. Now Durga had taught her to know that she belonged to no one but herself. As did Durga, who could turn from tenderness to destruction in the blink of an eye. Sati might never enter the bridal chamber but she had entered the darkness of herself, for Durga demanded a frightening reverence. She required a journey towards experience, the deep knowing of herself. Where that destination was, Sati did not know. It waited for her, just as Durga waited for her, beyond the edge of time. She looked up again at the starry sky, filled by a brightness that shed no light. She listened but the voice that had called was silent. There was nothing before her but the running of the tide. Yet the wash of the current came to her now as a life-giving silence. She closed her eyes before the river and heard it whisper her name.

She knew then that Durga resided within her still, in that crack between spirit and matter. She knew too that Durga swam before her in the wild and solitary force of the river, and that by the river all things were sustained. Its tide rose and fell in seasons, it caused the birthing and the dying-away of everything at its right time, over and over again. Whatever the river touched was fed by its force. She took
a breath of the thick muddy air and swallowed it deep inside her. She knew now that Durga was everywhere.

She became aware then of other sounds and looked up. A short distance further up the wharf there was movement and the light of flares. A crowd of women and children were descending on to the quay from the fort. There seemed something furtive about the women as they huddled together at the river’s edge. The crying of infants was immediately hushed, the loud voices of boatmen were lowered. Even the number of flares seemed frugal for so large a party. Sati saw then that the women and children were being piled into small boats. One by one these set off towards two Indiamen waiting out in mid-stream, ablaze with lanterns upon the dark water. For a while she watched the boats row back and forth and the waiting group on the wharf grow steadily smaller. The sound of running feet eventually disturbed her.

‘
Devi
, everyone is worried. You were not to be seen. Some said the drunken Hatmen had taken you.’ Pagal hurried her. Jaya, Govindram and Mohini followed a short distance behind with a group of devotees. They streamed down the wharf with cries of relief to surround her. Jaya immediately burst out crying and cuffed Sati about the head.

‘Everyone is looking for you.’ She wiped her eyes on the end of her sari.

‘Many bad things are happening; all the Hatmen are drunk,’ Mohini explained, pushing in front of her.

The relief of the Devi Ashram resounded loudly upon the wharf until Pagal, who had wandered off on his own, returned shouting and waving his arms.

‘Hatmen’s ladies are all leaving. All are going to the big boats to escape Siraj Uddaulah. Only we have been left for the nawab to slaughter.’ The albino collapsed at Sati’s feet.

‘Aiee,’ Jaya cried out, and beat a fist upon her great breast in fury.

Her cry was a signal for confusion. The women of the Devi Ashram all began to speak at once in a hysterical manner. The old
men raced off along the wharf as fast as their arthritic legs allowed. The Devi Ashram streamed after them towards the departing boats. Sati was borne along in their midst.

At the water’s edge before the River Gate the Devi Ashram halted in shock. The last boats had already pushed off from the quay to carry the women of White Town away. Not a craft was left for the refugees. Some of the wives of the sepoys waded into the water as if to follow the boats, screaming out curses and bewailing the fate of their children. The Fort William soldiers still standing about on the quay began immediately rounding them up with bayonets.

Word soon spread back into the fort of the happenings on the waterfront. Refugees from the parade ground immediately poured out of the fort to swell the crowd of devotees on the wharf. Others peered over the ramparts at the departing boats.

‘The Governor is still here, and also all the other Hatmen. They have sent only their women away,’ someone yelled.

‘If their women are going, then truly danger is near. It is no longer in their power to defend us.’ The fruit stall man pushed his way forward to stand next to Govindram.

‘Already the nawab has control of so many big White Town houses.’ The seller of spices spoke up from behind the fruit stall man.

‘All the Hatmen soldiers have now come into the fort for safety. Very few are left fighting in the town. The nawab will come into Fort William to chase them out. Bang, bang, swish, swish. Soon we will all be killed.’ The itinerant vegetable woman jumped about in anxiety.

Sati had been pushed to the front of the crowd to stand at the water’s edge. The tide was high and the river washed over her bare feet. Darkness spread before her. Upon the water a lantern illuminated each departing boat. They bobbed slowly away on the tide into the night, the calls of the boatmen drifting back over the water. In the distance the two Indiamen waited, their lamps stars upon the river. One by one the small boats were lost in darkness, but for a pinprick of light.

The last boat of evacuees was already some distance from the quay.
It bobbed about, its lantern swaying precariously. Beneath the rocking lamp the pale faces of terrified women and children were tossed in and out of the shadows. Sati saw then that a woman stood agitatedly at the end of the boat. A Hatman appeared and gripped her firmly, forcing her down. Sati stepped forward and did not realise how deep the water was about her until Govindram reached out to draw her back. The lantern on the boat had illuminated a familiar figure. There was no mistaking the Governor’s wife, poised as if to jump from the boat. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders, desperation clawed at her face. About her the women held on to her skirts as if they pegged down a billowing tent. Emily Drake’s voice echoed back to Sati over the water.