The Faraway Drums (37 page)

“Really?” Even Mahendra had to smile at that; he knew his limitations and took delight in them. “I’ll try. But what happens to her when the revolution succeeds? Will you promise me you’ll get rid of her?”

He had dreamed of succeeding Mala as the ruler of Serog, but that could have happened only in the context of a British India. Even then the British might have interfered; they had deposed several princes who had not fitted into their schemes. In the context of a revolutionary India he would have been a very small fish; better to die and be hailed than to live and be forgotten or overlooked. But he could not bear the thought of Mala’s surviving while he was dead.

“She’ll be attended to,” said Sankar. “Just as will all the others who oppose us.”

“More killing?”

“If need be. But don’t turn pale, Bertie—there won’t be a blood-bath just for the sake of revenge. If those against us want to leave and live in England, we’ll let them. They just won’t be allowed to take their wealth with them, that’s all.”

“I wasn’t thinking of the English. How many of our own people must die? You have already killed my wife Ganga.”

“Not I. That was the stupid merchant Chand. He bungled two attempts to kill Farnol. He deserved to die himself.”

“He killed my wife.”

“I’m sorry about that. It couldn’t be helped, given the circumstances.”

Suddenly he wanted to kill Sankar. Murder was there in his hands; but there wasn’t enough
courage
in his heart. He held back the tears of rage, at himself more than at Sankar. He had loved Ganga and the only way he could revenge her death was with words.

Mahendra, insensitive to atmosphere, careless of what the Nawab might feel about his dead wife, said, “I hope everything goes according to plan. There are all the millions we want to follow us . . . For all you know, your wife Ganga might have been on our side.”

The Nawab said nothing, wanting to kill him, too.

“Everyone will follow us.” Sankar had the blind faith of the fanatic. “Nationalism isn’t something that only
we
feel—it’s in the villages, too.”

The Nawab sighed, gave up the idea of immediate murder. “I hope you can spread the message quickly and then hold it . . . You may be killing the King too early.”

“Killing the King will be our rallying cry.”

The Nawab turned his face away, wondered if Ganga would have fled to England with him, been happy there.

10

I

DURING THE
next four days the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Delhi got everything they had hoped for. Romance, scandal, adultery, picked pockets, polo matches, tea parties and such balls as would be talked about even more than the Maharajah of Patiala’s. The Nawab of Kalanpur played in a cricket match and, his mind on other things, was bowled for nought: the revolution was not going to be won on the playing fields of India. There were investitures at which honours were handed out like the cakes at the tea parties. Bridie estimated that if all the medals collected were dropped at the same moment the resulting clang would have been heard in Washington, where no medals were struck but where ex-Presidents and ex-Governors and ex-Senators held on to their titles as if they were baronies.

The King and Queen, each night, were glad to escape to the quiet of the royal tents. The King slept peacefully. The Queen tried to read the biography of Warren Hastings and dropped off to sleep before he had even set out for India. In her dreams she envied him still being in England. Only in her dreams can a queen afford to be envious. Nobody would believe it if she showed it while she was awake.

George Lathrop played cat-and-mouse with the plotters. He was sorely tempted by Farnol’s suggestion that they should all be arrested and thrown into jail for the duration of the Durbar. He went to the Viceroy, told His Excellency what was known and asked for permission for the arrests; Lord Hardinge gave an adamant refusal. The King had to be protected in more ways than one.

“We can’t do it, Lathrop. The King believes the princes are the cornerstone of his rule in India. He’s right, of course—but he just doesn’t know how much we rule the princes. He’s no fool and if I went to him and told him some of them are plotting to kill him, he’d believe me. But to arrest them—and how many do we arrest? Three, four, a dozen? You don’t know how many are in the plot—that would put a cloud over his Coronation that he wouldn’t like at all. He had enough trouble convincing Cabinet and the
Archbishop
of Canterbury that he should come out here—”

“The Archbishop of Canterbury?”

“Oh yes. Canterbury insisted that only he can crown the monarch and if he’d come out here and made it a Christian ceremony, you can imagine how the Hindus and Muslims would have felt. It’s not public knowledge yet, but there’s going to be no actual crowning ceremony. The King will put his crown on before he leaves his tent . . . No, Lathrop, there are too many factors to be considered. We’ll have to take the risk, keep a very close eye on your plotters and see that no attempt is made on the King’s life.”

“Why can’t kings stay at home?” said Lathrop plaintively.

“Exactly,” said Hardinge, who did not like being Number Two in India, even to his sovereign. “My grandfather, when he was Viceroy, said a prayer every day that Queen Victoria would never come to look at India.”

Lathrop went away, feeling proud, as he always did, at the continuity of families who had kept India together. Yet he could feel the unravelling, as in a rope left too long to the elements, in the continuity. There was enough Indian influence, if not blood, in him to make him superstitious; and he was troubled by the portent of what the King was to announce tomorrow at his coronation. Lathrop was one of only twelve men in India and an equal number in London who knew that tomorrow it would be announced that the capital of India was to be moved from Calcutta to Delhi. There would be cries of distress from the merchants of Calcutta as there had been when Simla had become the alternative capital for eight months of the year; the senior civil servants and army brass would not take readily to having to set up new establishments and new residences in a city that still had to be built. None of that worried Lathrop; as head of the Political Service he spent a good deal of his time travelling anyway. What disturbed him was the superstition, based on India’s history, that any ruling power moving to Delhi was planning its own demise. Irrational ideas itch more than logic.

Bridie and Lady Westbrook went to visit Karim Singh in hospital, partly out of true concern for him and partly as a change from the entertainment that was beginning to swamp them. Bridie was surprised at her own reaction to seeing him with his hair in a top-knot: India, she decided, looked its best in a turban. Her Irish romanticism was overcoming her Irish aversion to things English: she was beginning to see only the best in the Empire, was turning a blind eye to its sins. If she stayed here long enough she would be a
female
Kipling.

“I’m falling for the theatre of it all,” she told Lady Westbrook.

“We’ve done a lot of good here, m’dear. We have well-deserved black marks against us, but all in all we’ve done more good than harm. Even Prince Sankar will realize that when he and his chums try to run India on their own.”

Karim Singh, a true son of Empire, was out of bed and sitting in a chair when his visitors arrived. He winced as he stood up and was sharply told by Lady Westbrook to sit down again. “Sit down, you silly chap! What are you doing out of bed?”

“Stretching my legs, memsahib. Tomorrow I am going to see the King. The Major has arranged that I shall get a marvellous view, with a telescope and all—”

“Ridiculous! You’re in no fit condition—”

“I am going to be there, memsahib.” Karim had never allowed himself to be browbeaten by a woman, not even this titled English lady. Discretion was only for serious occasions, like being shot at or stabbed. “It is something that will never happen again and I must be able to tell it to my grandchildren.”

Lady Westbrook couldn’t argue with such sentiment. She already had her grandchildren and suddenly she wished they could be here with her tomorrow. To see the theatre of Empire . . . “Well, do be careful, Karim Singh.”

On the way back from the hospital Lady Westbrook, having just played hospital matron, assumed the role of matchmaker again. “How is your affair with Clive progressing?”

“Am I having an affair with him?” Bridie had learned not to be offended by her bluntness.

“For want of a better word . . . Don’t let’s beat about the bush. I’m not asking if you’ve been to bed with him. But you are in love with the man and I’d hate to see you go to waste. What are his intentions?”

“Dishonourable, I think.”

“Good. That never hurts as a temporary measure. It means he’s interested. But it’s the long term we’re interested in.”

“We?”

“Of course. I haven’t known you very long, m’dear, but you have become one of my favourite
people.
And Clive has always been one. Nothing would please me more than to see you become the favourite of each other. You don’t have much time to work in. What are your plans when the Durbar is over?”

“Clive has some leave and he is coming down to Bombay to see me on to the ship for home.”

“Then that’s when you have to see he makes up his mind. Be irresistible, m’dear.”

“I’ll work on it.” But Bridie wondered if being irresistible would be enough. She had come to India without a thought in her head about the future and now the future looked bleak.

For his part Farnol had more than love and his personal future on his mind. He was seeing the Baron: “We want you to put some pressure on Herr Monday. We have intercepted two cable messages he has sent, one to Krupps and the other to DWM. They are coded, but we know they are orders for field guns, rifles and machine-guns.”

The Baron shook his huge head. He had been fortunate in securing a small camp of two tents for his own use; it had been suggested by the Commissioner for Accommodation that he should share with the Swiss Consul-General, but he had vetoed that. His own neutrality was enough of a burden without having to listen to the sanctimony of the Swiss.

“I can remember a time when gentlemen didn’t read each other’s mail. Whatever happened to honourable conduct, Major?”

“I think it finally disappeared round the time of Metternich, Baron.”

“You’re far too cynical for a young man, Major.” He sighed, thinking how much better a world it would be if cynicism, like hardening of the arteries, were an affliction only of the aged. “What do you want me to do with Herr Monday?”

“We don’t want anything of this to get into the open. If possible, we should rather that the Mondays left of their own accord than have to deport them. We can do that if it’s necessary, but His Excellency is all for everything being done as quietly and with as much decorum as possible.”

“Every inch a gentleman,” said the Baron, not meaning to sound cynical. “One has to admire the English upper classes. They do everything so much better than we Germans do.”

Like remembering to lift the little finger as they passed the cup of poison.
But Farnol, who was too worried to concern himself with scruples or decorum, was glad that H.E. was backing Lathrop and himself all the
way.
“His Excellency would appreciate it, Baron, if you could give us an answer by this evening.”

“What sort of answer?”

“If you could persuade Herr Monday to send a further cable cancelling his orders—?”

“That may be difficult, Major.” The stump of his arm ached as it had when it had first been amputated. He had been a soldier then and diplomacy had not been necessary; and pain, it seemed, had been easier to bear. “However, I shall do my best.”

“One can’t ask for more than that, Baron. No, don’t get up.” The old man looked tired and spent. “When this is all over, I should like to spend an evening with you. Perhaps you would care to tell me what life was like in Europe when you were young.”

“Simpler, Major. Much simpler.”

In another part of the tent city the Ranee of Serog was living her usual simple life of diamond-festooned lechery. Resigned to not being able to lure Clive Farnol into her bed again, she had cast an eye over what else was on offer and decided on three young subalterns, one from the Bengal Lancers, one from Mayne’s Horse and, thinking of a trip to London next year, one from the King’s entourage. The young men each thought that he was the only favourite of this beautiful, depraved woman. The Bengal Lancer, living up to his name, was her particular favourite and was marked down for future use.

Mahendra, observing all this lust on the part of his half-sister, was hard put to restrain his natural prudery. But in the interests of revolution he only smiled at her assignations. This unexpected condonation troubled her and, sometimes at the wrong moment, reduced her pleasure. A woman’s passion, unlike that of a man, can be cooled by suspicion.

Meanwhile Prince Sankar, playing his role as the Rajah of Pandar, went about the tent city paying his respects to other rulers. He visited no less than forty-four princes, all of them known friends of the British Raj, and Lathrop’s informers, the road-sweepers, water-cart wallahs and gharry drivers, reported this social round and left Lathrop more wondering and worried than before.

“The bugger’s playing games with us, Clive.”

“So long as he remains visible . . .”

“He’s
too
bloody visible. It’s as if he’s nominated himself as the decoy.”

“Are Bertie and Mahendra being watched?”

“
Twenty-four hours a day. I’ve been keeping an eye on Bertie myself. I think he’s the weak link in their scheme. He looks sick to death with something on his mind. Perhaps we could bring him in—?”

“He may look sick, George, but Bertie’s a damn sight tougher than you think. I’m just puzzled why he’s mixed up with Sankar—it can’t be just a family thing.”

“It could be money. He’s a profligate bugger.”

“He was talking about the expense of everything on his way down from Simla . . .” Then Farnol shook his head. “No, surely a chap wouldn’t get himself into such murderous company because of money?”