The Faraway Drums (15 page)

“And Herr Monday?”

“Ah—” He drained the last drop from his glass of port, looked at the empty decanter, decided it would be too much bother even to strike the gong for a servant to bring more port. “No diplomat ever really welcomes an arms salesman coming to his door wanting patronage. It contradicts diplomacy. Herr Monday brought a most comprehensive catalogue with him. He is trying to sell more than hunting rifles.”

“To whom?”

“If I knew, Major, I should let you know. I do not want us falling out. Not just you and I. England and Germany.”

Farnol stood up, knowing the Baron was telling the truth and he would get no more from him. As he did so he saw Albern suddenly look past him. “Ach—a servant at last! Get me more port. We’ll have a last night-cap, Major.”

“I am sorry, sahib, I am not one of the palace servants—I do not know where the drink is kept. I am one of the Ranee’s men. She has sent me here to ask Major Farnol to come to her rooms.”

The old diplomat got slowly and heavily to his feet. “Oh, I envy you, Major. Or should I?”

Farnol still had enough humour in him to be able to smile. “Not tonight, Baron. I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll be leaving early, I hope.”

He followed the servant through the silent halls and corridors, came at last to the door of the Ranee’s suite. The giant Sikh stood outside it again, the point of his big sword between his feet, his hands resting on the hilt. He lifted the sword and Farnol, still on edge, tensed, thinking he was going to be struck by it; but the Sikh was only raising it in salute as he stepped aside for Farnol to go into the room. The door was closed behind him and for some reason that amused him, Farnol waited for the turning of a key in the lock but there was none.

The Ranee’s bedroom could have accommodated a small durbar; arches opened into two other large rooms for any overflow. Farnol had spent nights in several bedrooms with the Ranee, but the size of this room, he felt, would have made him impotent; it would have been like making love in a theatre with the audience likely to file into their seats at any moment. The Ranee, dressed in diaphanous pink, was reclining on a divan at the foot of the great canopied bed. She looked almost comical in her seductiveness but Farnol
knew
better than to smile. Mala saw no humour in any role she played.

The room, Farnol noticed at once, was unusually warm. Rooms of such size, with their tessellated floors and high ceilings, were difficult to heat in the cold months in these mountains. Then he saw the giant ceramic-fronted stoves in the four corners.

“A present to my father by the Russians,” said the Ranee. “From Tsar Alexander the Third himself. Those were the days when the English were afraid that the Russian bear was ready to come down into India and gobble them up. Sit here, Clive darling. Come on, I’m not going to gobble you up.”

He sat down on the end of the divan like an apprehensive schoolboy. Then abruptly he smiled and relaxed, let his eyes enjoy the Ranee. She wore nothing under the smoke-thin gown; she was naked in a pink mist. She had taken off all her jewellery except a wide diamond bracelet and her rings: there had to be a limit to one’s nakedness.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Mala, are you trying to seduce me?”

“Clive darling, if you’re willing, so am I. That’s why I had all the stoves lit, so you wouldn’t feel the cold when you took your clothes off.”

He shook his head. “You can dampen the fires—and yourself. I’m not taking anything off. Mala, what is Major Savanna doing here in the palace?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I’m sure you already know that he’s drugged and may be dying.”

She put her foot, in its purple silk sandal, into his lap, moved her heel into his groin. He took hold of the foot and, gently at first, then tightening his grip, slowly twisted it. He had always believed that every man, and every woman (or at least every woman he had made love to), had a streak of sadism in him or her. He allowed the streak in himself to widen.

“You’d better tell me what you know, Mala, or I’ll cripple you. You’ll never be half as attractive hobbling around on a crippled foot.”

He had not expected her to cry out, to surrender at once: that wasn’t Mala. But he had also not expected her to endure the pain as long as she did; she stared at him, only a tightening round the full mouth hinting at the pain she was feeling. He could feel the tendons stretching, the bones ready to grind against
each
other; then he felt the strength draining out of his own hand. He let go her foot, found himself sweating.

She drew up her foot, massaged it, then stretched her leg back towards him again; but this time the foot rested beside his thigh, not in his lap. “You had better take off your tie and coat, Clive. You’re sweating like some little office-wallah from Calcutta.”

He undid his white tie, slipped off his tail-coat. His starched shirt-front seemed ready to pop out of his waistcoat. “You should not tempt me, Mala.”

“Tempt you to hurt me? Was I doing that?”

Abruptly angry, he jumped to his feet and walked away from her. “Dammit, don’t let’s beat about the bush! Tell me what’s going on or I’ll have it arranged that you’ll be barred from the Durbar, that you won’t even get near the King!”

“You’re not that important, Clive—you don’t have that sort of influence. If you knew the men I’d slept with, you wouldn’t make such a foolish threat. I’ll attend the Durbar, whatever you think you can do. But you really don’t think I’m planning to kill the King, do you?”

It took him a moment, in his anger, to get his thoughts together. Then: “Who told you I think there is a plot to assassinate him? Major Savanna is the only one who knows what I suspect.”

“No, darling.” She stood up, tested her foot before she walked on it, then came towards him. Beneath the gossamer veil of her gown he could see the body he had once known so well. But he could resist it now: or so he told himself. “You as much as told me yourself, at dinner at the Lodge last night. And someone has not been trying to kill you just because you’re a political agent. I suppose they’ve tried that before, but not three times in four days. You may be right—someone may well be planning to assassinate the King. But it’s not me, darling.”

He didn’t know whether to believe her or not. Her tongue could be as devious in lying as in loving. “All right, I do think there is a plot of some sort. But I have no evidence of it and nothing may ever come of it, it may just turn out to be a brainstorm of mine. But that doesn’t alter what’s happened to Rupert Savanna. So you’d better tell me what you know, because I’m not going to let it rest. I’ll keep at you all the way down to Delhi and then there I’ll have Colonel Lathrop take over. I know
he
hasn’t slept with you. His wife takes care of him too well.”

She
sighed, lifted her arms above her head: the breasts rose up under the gown. He waited for her to yawn; she looked ready for bed, to dismiss him just by turning her back. Then she lowered her arms, crossed to a chair and sat down, drawing the gown about her in a flimsy show of modesty (though he knew she was incapable of modesty).

“Clive, Major Savanna has had his own little plot. He’s been trying to turn Bobs against me.”

Farnol pulled up another chair, sat down opposite her. All the seductive posturing was out of the way now; they were getting down to brass—no, in her case, golden tacks. He might even get the truth from her.

“Why should Savanna want to involve himself in your affairs? You’re the rightful ruler of Serog and you’re the one the Government recognizes. Why should we British want to bother ourselves with someone as—as unstable as your brother?”

“Clive, the English have been trying to topple kings and princes for centuries—it’s their principal overseas sport. Not cricket, as foolish Bertie seems to think. I know I’m not popular with my people. It doesn’t worry me. I don’t believe in the Hereafter, so I’m not going to trouble myself by building up any heavenly credits amongst a lot of ignorant peasants.”

He smiled. “Why are you honest only when you’re so despicable?”

“Don’t try to flatter me, Clive.”

His smile widened and he shook his head. “All right, no flattery. But you are dodging another question. Why do the English want you moved out and Bobs moved in?”

“I didn’t say they did. I said Major Savanna did. Now whether that means the same thing, I don’t know. Perhaps you’d have to ask my brother.”

“I’ll do that.” But he had no faith that he would get an honest answer, if one at all, from Mahendra. “How long has this—this plot of Savanna’s been going on?”

“I’m not sure. I only learned of it two days ago. Last night I told Major Savanna what I knew. That was when I said he would have me to answer to.”

It all sounded truthful enough. Then: “It wasn’t you who had the train stopped, so that we’d have to come down this way? No, you’re a plotter yourself, Mala, but that would be too elaborate. It was just sheer chance, was it?”

“
Yes. You see, the gods do smile on the wicked occasionally. They love their little ironies, just like the rest of us.”

“Were you going to go on down to Delhi and wait till after the Durbar before you did anything about Savanna and your brother?”

“No. I knew that Bobs is also coming down to the Durbar. He was planning to kill me in Delhi, but now he has the chance to kill me any time between now and the Durbar. He told me tonight he is coming with us in the morning.”

III

Lady Westbrook, declaring that she would be safe since no one was interested in killing off an old bird like herself, had gone back to her own room. Private Ahearn was sent across to Bridie’s room to sleep; Karim Singh made himself as comfortable as he could outside Farnol’s door and settled down to guard his master. That left Farnol and Bridie alone with the still unconscious Savanna.

“Did you try to feed him any of the mustard?” Farnol said.

“No. He might have vomited and choked. We’ll just have to be patient.”

“We?”

“I’m as interested in the mystery of all this as much as you are. Not just from a story angle, either. It’s personal now.” She was surprised at how concerned she had become for his safety, though she was not yet prepared to tell him so. “How did you fare with the Ranee?”

“How did you know I’d been with her?”

“I could smell her perfume on you when you came back in here.”

“There was much less of that faring, as you put it, than you suspect. Mala had her designs on me—”

“Oh my God!” Her reaction was a defensive one, against letting her feelings get away from her. Attack the man if you don’t want to be too attracted to him . . . “Do you have any modesty about your charms?”

He considered for a moment. “No, I don’t think I have. Modesty is only an inferiority complex raised to being a virtue.”

Well,
she had always told herself she liked a man with an air of arrogance about him. “Go on,” she said resignedly.

“One must face facts and I take it that, as a journalist, that’s all you’re interested in? She had designs on me and I declined her offer. May I go on further?”

“Do.” She glanced at the still form of Savanna, glad that he could not hear this conversation. She knew that the conversation, flippant and trivial as it was, was a dance in which she and Farnol were trying to fit their steps together. They were life-and-death partners who didn’t yet know each other well enough for things to be taken for granted.

“I learned quite a lot from Mala, but all it seems to have done is deepen the mystery.” He told her of Savanna’s attempt to drive a wedge between the Ranee and her brother. He did not tell her that the Ranee suspected Mahendra might try to kill her on the journey down to Delhi. He kept that information to himself in order to protect her from further worry, if from nothing else. He would have to see that she did not keep close company with the Ranee, though, knowing Mala, he thought that possibility would be remote. “I don’t think I’ll get to the bottom of it all until Major Savanna comes out of his coma.”

“If he comes out . . .”

He looked at Savanna, grey and still as an effigy of himself. “Yes. If . . .”

Bridie sighed, sat back in her chair, all at once tired by the long frightening day. “Is it always like this for you? Is this what running an Empire means?”

“I don’t run the Empire any more than you run your newspaper. I’m only a cog, just as you are.”

“I didn’t mean you personally. I meant the whole British Raj. You’re masters of, what, four hundred million people? And how many are there of you?”

“Not as many as you would think. A hundred thousand of us at the most, including the army. The whole of the Indian Civil Service, those who make India work, is run by only thirteen hundred British civil servants—they’ve learned how to delegate minor authority to the Indians and
chee-chees
who work for them. You must have noticed, India isn’t over-run with the English.”

“Do you think of yourself as English? Lady Westbrook told me how long your family has been here.” It struck her that she was far less American, by several generations, than he was Indian.

It was a question he had pondered on over the years, ever since he had come back from his
schooling
in England. “No, I don’t think I really am.”

“Indian, then?”

“No, not that, either.”

“Then what happens to you if India ever demands its independence, as we Americans did? They will, you know, some day.”

He surprised her by nodding. “Of course they will. But when they do, it will be the intellectuals and the moneymakers who will take over and the peasants and the coolies in the cities will be no better off, they’ll be just as poor as they ever were. My father once told me that no one will ever solve the economic problems of India. All the Raj has done, he said, was to make chaos work.”

“Will they demand their independence soon?”

“Men like Har Dayal are already demanding it. But how do you get an ocean of people to follow you?”

“You English appear to have done it.”

“No, they’re not our followers and we’re not their leaders. We couldn’t have done as much as we have without the cooperation of the princes. And they will never band together for independence—they’ll have too much to lose.”