The Faraway Drums (28 page)

Farnol broke away from the man, stumbled backwards towards the opening, hit the tent-pole and almost brought the whole lot crashing down. Then he was out in the open and the man was coming after him, long knife upraised. Farnol fell back, looking for more space, and tripped over a tent-rope. He went down in a heap and the assassin stood above him.

Then the shot rang out and the man fell forward over Farnol. The latter rolled to one side and the knife missed his head by inches. He crawled out from beneath the body of the man and saw the Baron, pistol in his one hand, standing in the tent doorway.

“Thank you, Baron. Thank Christ you can still fire one of those.”

He went into the tent, lit the lamp and brought it out as Karim Singh, Private Ahearn and four of the guards came running up. He kicked the dead man over on his back, reached down and pulled the turban-end away from the man’s face.

It was the merchant, the entrepreneur who had everything, including, it seemed, knives for assassination.

III

“This bugger would not have got into your tent, sahib, if I had been guarding you instead of Mr. Monday.”

“He might have killed you before he got to me, Karim.” Farnol looked down at the dead merchant; the waxed moustache was flattened against his upper lip like a big black moth. “The point is, he’s dead and not you or me.”

But Karim Singh was still unhappy and said so to Private Ahearn as they called bearers to pick up the body and take it away. “We have to be in two places at once from now on. We have to look after the sahib as well as that other chap Monday.”

“I’m beginning to think I oughta stayed in Simla. Whose bloody trouble is it, anyway? It’s got nothing to do with me.”

But Ahearn was less disgruntled than he sounded. The closer he stayed to Major Farnol, the more he put the officer in his debt, the bigger his chances of being transferred to Farnol’s Horse.

A horse, not American or Australian horizons, had become his dream. He could not remember being as happy as he had been these past few days, riding instead of marching, watering and attending to his borrowed mount each evening as if it were a favourite child. India, from the extra height of a horse’s back, had taken on a whole new aspect.

The whole camp had been disturbed by the shot, but Farnol, curtly and with no respect for rank or sex, ordered everyone back to bed. Bridie and the others wanted to ask questions, but he was in no mood for them. He was still recovering from the shock of how close he had come once again to being murdered; he was not about to display the cracks he could feel in himself. He could be arrogant, but he was not vain: he never thought of himself as a hero nor did he strive to be one. But he did believe in keeping up appearances and right now he needed to appear to be a competent British officer, in command of himself as well as the situation. So he acted like a competent British officer and sent everyone to bed, as he might have dismissed a company of Farnol’s Horse. He was a little surprised that everyone did go, though Lady Westbrook made a fighting retreat.

“You should tell us what’s going on, Clive. We could all be killed in our beds.”

“
I promise you that won’t happen, Viola. Now go back to your beauty sleep.”

“Who needs a beauty sleep if one’s throat is cut in the morning?” But she was more concerned for him than she was for herself and he recognized it and was grateful.

Four bearers were putting the merchant’s body on to a pallet when Farnol went back to them and pulled up the dead man’s sleeve.

“The mark is there, sahib?” said Karim Singh.

It was there, on the inside of the elbow. “The crown and the dagger. This one is a better tattoo than those other chaps had.”

“This bugger had more money for a good tattoo. He’s not a coolie, this chap.”

“No. We’ll find out in the morning who he really is.”

He went into his tent, got into bed and felt suddenly cold. He knew it was not just from the fact that he’d been outside in only his pyjamas; he knew what sort of cold it was, the shiver of fear. He looked across at the Baron and wondered what reaction the old man was feeling.

“You’ve just declared whose side you’re on, Baron. I’ll have to see they don’t try for you next.” “Perhaps.” The Baron seemed unworried. “I am sorry, Clive, if all this is directed from Berlin.” “I don’t think it is. Not
directed
. Assisted, perhaps. This is a local movement.”

“Aah!” It was a long, sad sigh. Wishful thinking made Thuringia suddenly so much closer; he would resign immediately after the Durbar and go home. He would read Goethe and, like the poet, look around for a mistress, one old enough not to waste pity on him. But not
too
old: there were limits to what one should have to put up with in a woman, even a mistress. He could not, for instance, imagine Lady Westbrook’s making any man comfortable in his old age. “Why must everyone be so ambitious?”

“Weren’t you ever ambitious?”

The Baron turned his head and smiled as he reached across with his one hand and turned out the lamp. “Of course. But at my age one wonders why.”

In the early morning Farnol, accompanied by Karim Singh, went up the road to the village. A small group of elders waited, as if they knew he would be coming. “We have seen the dead man, sahib. He is a stranger.”

“You have never seen him before?” Farnol kept the surprise out of his voice; he had assumed
that
the merchant had had a store in the village. “Not even yesterday before we arrived?”

“No, sahib.” The spokesman peered at Farnol out of cataract-dimmed eyes; he could have been an honest man but his eyes would never bear witness. “We want nothing to do with the stranger. You must bury him yourself, sahib.”

The body rested on the camel-drawn cart, on the cargo of bright silks. Someone from the village, knowing the stranger was dead, had stolen the tarpaulin during the night but left the silks; the latter would be too easily identifiable. The cart had become a gaudy hearse, but the camels looked as indifferent as ever and smelled just as badly.

“I shall pay you to dispose of the body.”

“With respect, sahib, we want nothing to do with an enemy of the Raj.”

Oh, pretty soon, whether you like it or not, you may have a great deal to do with an enemy of the Raj
. He looked at the five faces around him, but it was impossible to tell the thoughts behind the dimmed eyes and the veils of wrinkles. “Thank you for your respect. All right, I shall have the body burnt.”

“Will you burn the man’s goods with him, sahib?” The eyes were not so dim that they couldn’t see the value of the silks.

“I present them to your village for your loyalty to the Raj.”

“We are most honoured, sahib.” Their feet scraped the dirt as they itched to be at the gift.

So for the second time the caravan’s bearers had to build a pyre and burn a body; but this time there was no call to wait for the ashes. The caravan moved on after a breakfast at which there was very little conversation. Farnol watched the Nawab and Mahendra for their reaction to last night’s attempted murder of himself, but other than a quiet question from the Nawab as to how he felt this morning the night could have been uneventful.

But as they started off at the head of the caravan Mahendra said, “Will you be leaving us at Kalka, Major?”

“That will depend on how I’m to get down to Delhi. Does my presence worry you?”

“Not really. But you do seem to carry bad luck with you.”

“Not for myself. I’ve been very lucky so far.”

It was a quiet day: no incident, and very little talk amongst those most concerned with the safe
arrival
of the caravan at Kalka. The escort and cooks and bearers chattered amongst themselves; they had their own problems and the possibility of a dead sahib would make no difference to their lives. In mid-afternoon the procession came down through a defile on to the main Simla-Kalka road and at the first village Farnol reined his horse in before the store that was also the post office.

“Is the telegraph working?”

The postmaster’s tunic had been inherited from a predecessor, who had been a much larger man. He kept losing his hands up his sleeves, so that half the time he appeared handless. “Oh yes, sahib, working very well to Kalka. But not to Simla. Something is very wrong up there, I fear.”

“The telephone?”

“Oh sahib, this is a poor village. We have no telephone. I shall be dead and gone before there is a telephone here.” He beamed, as if neither death nor the absence of a telephone worried him.

“I want to send a telegraph message to Kalka. Urgent.”

“Everything is urgent priority from here, sahib. Nobody uses the telegraph, everyone is too poor.” A generous hand appeared out of a sleeve like a crab.

“The telegraph line is all yours, sahib.”

Farnol sent the message to the O.C. of the Military Depot at Kalka. He requested that a detachment of troops be sent up the Simla road to meet the caravan and that a special train be ordered for the guests of the Government, the Ranee of Serog, her brother Prince Mahendra and the Nawab of Kalanpur. The answer came back in an hour.
Am aware of situation on Simla-Kalka railway line. Escort will meet you. Will do best with special train but jolly short supply
.

They camped that night in the lower hills, within sight of the plains. Farnol walked out on to a low bluff and gazed south. He could see the long low haze of smoke and dust hovering over the villages; he sniffed and imagined he could smell the acrid air that stretched south a thousand miles from here. The setting sun turned the haze into golden shields above the villages, but one had to be here on the slopes, far away, to appreciate the beauty of it. He doubted that anyone in the villages was raising his head to look at the colours above him.

“I’ll be glad when this journey is over.” Bridie had come and stood beside him. “But I’m not looking forward to Delhi, despite the Durbar and all the spectacle that’s promised. I think I’ve fallen in love
with
the mountains, the high ones up beyond Simla. I only saw them from a distance, when I’d go riding down at Annandale, but they were so beautiful . . .”

“You have to live amongst them to appreciate them.”

“Will you be going back to your regiment to stay?” The regiment was stationed on the plains. He remembered the polo matches, the pig-sticking, the practice charges across the
maidan
: there had been pleasures in being a cavalryman. But he also remembered the formalities that had irritated him, the small world of the mess and the parade ground and the tight, precedence-bound social circle that surrounded both. He had known a freedom in the past three years that had spoiled him for the regiment.

“It depends. My father feels I should go back—he’d like me to command it, as he and his father and my great-grandfather did.”

“Does family tradition mean much to you?”

“Yes and no. I don’t think I’d feel much for myself if I broke the tradition. But I’d feel for my father. The regiment for him is
family
.”

“Then you’ll be expected to go back to it.”

“They’re not going to give me command while I’m away in the Political Service. I think I may have been away too long.”

“You don’t sound as if you do want command.”

He’d had that ambition once; but he doubted it now. “It’s cavalry. I wonder if they’ll use horses in the next war—”

“You think there’ll be another war?”

“They are talking about war in Europe now. There have been enough flare-ups this year—the Germans rattled their swords at Agadir in June. Oh, there’ll be another war some time, sooner or later. There’ll always be wars while men are still alive to fight them.”

“You’re talking like a soldier.
Hoping
there’ll be one—”

“No. I don’t want a war. It won’t be fought here in India if there is one. Perhaps some skirmishes with the tribesmen, perhaps even something bigger with the revolutionaries. But it won’t be
the
war—that will be fought in Europe. And I don’t think there’ll be a place for cavalry there. They’ll be using motor cars and lorries—”

“
Is that what the generals think?”

“I don’t know. But all the generals are old now—they won’t last long with their old ideas. Then the new men will take over. I don’t think I’d want to fight a war in a motor car.”

“You think it should be some operatic exhibition, all your horses charging and you waving your sword?”

“Yes.” But he smiled; then was sober. “But I don’t think the next war will be like that. Not with the guns I hear Krupps are making . . .” He looked back towards the camp for Monday, as if expecting the Hungarian to produce a sample. “I think I may emigrate to America. You will be neutral in all future wars.”

“Why should we be?” In her own ears she sounded like William Randolph Hearst, eager to provide yet another war for newspaper copy.

“Why shouldn’t you be? You have all that water, the Atlantic and the Pacific, on either side of you.” But he knew that West Point and Annapolis would be disappointed if he were right.

She changed the subject. Or changed to a detail of the same subject: she wasn’t sure which. Till she had crossed the Atlantic she had not known there was so much talk of war in the chancelleries of Europe. When she had left Boston at the end of October the newspapers had been full of the Philadelphia Athletics’ World Series win against the New York Giants; the comments of Connie Mack and John J. McGraw had had far more importance than the warnings of statesmen in foreign capitals. She began to wonder who would listen to Mr. Mack and Mr. McGraw if America went to war.

“I wish you’d tell me more of what’s going on here.”

“If I did, you’d write an article for your newspaper. And it might all be based on rumour. I promise you—I’ll tell you everything when we get down to Delhi. Or as much as I can.”

“We were partners when we started out from Simla. That’s what you led me to believe.”

“It’s become much more complicated since then. Be patient, Bridie, it’ll only be another day or two.” He put out a hand and after a moment she gave him hers.