Zemindar (54 page)

‘We’re going to need a heartener,’ he said as Charles came in looking immeasurably pleased with himself for the havoc he had created upstairs.

‘Here you are, Emily, drink up!’

‘But …’

‘No buts! The infant won’t need any sustenance for some time, and if it does the brandy will do it good. Laura, you too!’

I took the glass he handed me and sipped it gratefully. Unreality having descended on us with such catastrophic suddenness, the drinking of neat brandy at such an hour and in such surroundings of deliberate desolation seemed hardly out of the way.

‘Now, here’s the plan. We haven’t a hope in hell of getting away from Hassanganj tonight.’

‘Oh, Oliver!’ Emily almost screamed, straining the now deeply sleeping baby to her.

‘Not
tonight
I said, Emily. But we will get away tomorrow night. And in the meantime we must go into hiding. There are plenty of places upstairs in the attics, but we can’t risk remaining in the house, since they will probably fire it. So I’m taking you to the safest place I can think of—but everything depends on your keeping absolutely still and quiet until nightfall tomorrow. Understand, Emily?’

She nodded, but I wondered what sort of hiding place could be safe if fire was to be used against us in this dried-out tinderbox of a land.

‘Good. Now Toddy-Bob has already left with the carriage. He is our, er, decoy, so to speak, and a great deal depends on whether he manages to get away and abandon the carriage where I have told him to. Meanwhile, Ishmial is procuring a bullock-cart, which I am afraid is what you ladies are going to have to travel in. Our best chance, don’t you see, is to remain here for the moment, while giving the impression that we have left.’

‘But where?’ began Charles, impatiently.

‘Come, there’s nothing more to delay us. We will go out by the garden and skirt the house so that we don’t pass through the quarters. I believe everyone has left; they’d be too scared to hang around. But still, there’s no sense in running unnecessary risks.’

The moon had already descended and the night was very dark. Outside the house everything seemed quiet and as usual. The air was heavy with the scent of quisqualis and Christmas-pudding tree. Yakub Ali, the
abdar
, helped to carry the bundles, and the glimmer of his white
atchkan
was the only thing visible in the wide spaces of the garden. When I got my bearings, I realized that we were making towards the old tower … Moti’s tower. I had to suppose that Oliver knew his business, but I wondered uneasily whether, if I were a mutineer and knew the facts, it would not be the first place I would make for in search of Mr Erskine.

And then, almost the instant the thought passed through my mind, lights appeared in the distance, coming through the salwoodland that formed the northern boundary of the park. Lanterns bobbed, and torches, held aloft by horsemen, flared suddenly in currents of air then died down again.

‘God damn them! Here already!’ Oliver swore through his teeth as, with one accord, we stopped.

‘We’ll never get to Moti now,’ I said quietly to him.

‘Not a chance, God rot ’em! Now, pick up your heels and follow me.’ And he made a tangent to the left. Here the ground was rough, matted with unscythed grass and treacherous with unseen obstacles; but fear carried us over it safely, and within a few seconds we were in the grove of trees in which were situated the ice-pits, those queer beehivelike structures of thatch which had once so captivated my mind with their ingenuity.

Needing no instructions now, we crouched behind the thatch deepest in the shadow, hearing above our own gasps for breath the sound of shouts, hoarse laughter and hoofbeats growing momentarily nearer.

‘They’ll make straight for the house,’ Oliver whispered, trying to reassure us, ‘and we are off their route. Just keep quiet until they have passed.’

His voice was calm and, to my astonishment, now that I was nearer true peril than ever before in my life, I felt comparatively collected myself. Every sense was alerted and quivering with a rare sensitivity; never had my hearing been so acute, nor my eyes so fully adapted to darkness, and my mind raced, relating every smallest fact recorded by eyes, ears and nose to a reality already half apprehended. Even my body felt light and capable of extraordinary exertion. This, then, was the experience of danger. I knew now where lay the attraction in climbing mountains or shooting big game. Danger induced a sense of super-normality in the midst of fear that made men, for an instant, the kin of gods … or perhaps, more accurately, most truly human.

So we waited, holding our breaths, as the troop approached us, and I was glad for no rational reason that I was next to Oliver Erskine, and that his body shielded me from seeing round the edge of the domed thatch.

The noise was not loud; rather, it was controlled and ominous, though men called to each other and shouted. Somehow, it indicated a confidence that was unnerving to us, hiding like foxes in a covert. After what seemed an age, they had passed. We gave them more time, then Oliver peered round the ice-house.

‘All clear—but keep your voices down. There might be stragglers.’

‘What can we do now? For God’s sake, Oliver, we have got to get Emily and the baby out of here,’ whispered Charles. ‘Where were you taking us in the first place? Can’t we make a run for it, before they discover we have left?’

‘Not a chance! There’s a cellar under the flag floor of Moti’s house, she suggested it herself. It would have been safe enough, but too far. Too risky with the beggars all around us.’

‘Then what the devil …’

Oliver had turned his attention to Yakub Ali, who was whispering to him.

‘He’s right, by God!’ he said, turning back to us. ‘This is as good a place as any.’ He patted the thick thatch of the ice-house. ‘This stuff is in two layers, and Yakub says a man can lie comfortably between the two. We’ll soon find out.’

He began to pull out large sections of thatch from the edge of the roof, but Yakub, who had been examining the structure, beckoned Oliver to him. He had found a place where the thatch had already fallen out or disintegrated. Peering over Oliver’s shoulder into the slit this made, I felt rather than saw a space of about twenty inches between the two stout layers of thatch and dried palm leaves.

‘In with you, Laura, and be ready to take the bundles.’

I did not like being the first to enter. There would be insects and mice; perhaps even scorpions, or snakes, and what if … but the thought of the thatch on fire was too awful to formulate.

‘Get in,’ whispered Oliver again impatiently. ‘Even if it doesn’t hold, you haven’t far to fall.’

I believe he was joking, but at the time his remark added one more fear to my litany of horrors.

All that met me, as I crawled and clawed my way in, was a smothering cloud of dust. I could not stop myself from coughing and, though I did so as quietly as possible, was met by a harsh ‘Be quiet, will you!’ from below me as the bundles were pushed into the aperture. My eyes smarted, my nose was full of powdery grass and I nearly choked, so that I am not sure how long it took for us all to dispose ourselves around the central cone of the roof and arrange our luggage. But soon everyone was coughing and spluttering, even, as I was pleased to realize, the impatient Mr Erskine. Yakub Ali remained outside, and in response to Oliver’s whispered instructions we could hear him stuffing back the thatch that had been displaced by our entrance and sweeping up the odd wisps that must have littered the ground.

‘
Khub thik hai ab
!’ he whispered, and Oliver thanked him. We could not hear his footsteps as he departed.

‘What will happen to him now?’ I enquired anxiously. ‘Wouldn’t he be safer with us?’

‘He will be all right. He can make his way out without difficulty. No one will know he was with us.’

‘He won’t tell them, will he?’ I was ashamed to have to suspect, even so negatively, the stolid, prosaic Yakub, always so dignified and imperturbable; but I had thought of the abandoned gong in the porch, and the deserted bedrooms, and the motionless
punkah
. They had all known what was coming, but no one had warned us. No one but Moti. Which could only mean that there was danger to them in their association with us.

‘We must hope not,’ returned Yakub’s master.

‘And, Oliver …?’

‘Well?’

‘Have you thought that they might … they might set these roofs on fire. If they burn the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh!’

‘Sparks won’t do it. Too far, and the trees will protect us. They might fire them deliberately, but that’s a risk we have to take. They won’t suspect us of hiding in these things; there are no doors. The thatch is lifted off when the ice is removed. And they know how—er, delicate, English ladies are.’

‘Oh!’

I lapsed into silence and tried to pray; but within moments, the quiet was broken by yells that even in the distance were unmistakably enraged. Our escape had been discovered.

In the dust-filled darkness of our hiding place, we strained our ears to try to make out what was taking place, but it was difficult even to estimate distance correctly. Horses galloped past two or three times in the direction from which the mutineers had come and then doubled back on their tracks towards the house and out through the main entrance to the park. Oliver, listening intently, chuckled.

‘They have found the carriage tracks. Must have been a devil of a job in this darkness, even though I told Tod to fill it with fodder and make sure to cut corners across the flowerbeds. Perhaps some of the servants saw it go.’

‘They will know we were not in it then.’

‘No, it was the closed travelling carriage, blinds modestly down. There were trunks and band-boxes strapped to the back; Toddy took care of that. It will puzzle them, for a time at least.’

‘So you had it all planned.’

‘I thought so, but I misjudged the time of their coming—for which my apologies,’ he whispered back.

‘Very clever,’ I answered acidly.

The noise continued for hours—all through the long hot night. I wondered why no attempt was made to search the grounds for us, until I remembered the looting and the open wine cellar. Suddenly, a thought struck me.

‘If they are Mohammedans they won’t drink, will they?’

‘Not as Mohammedans. But as looters, I fancy they will allow themselves some indulgence.’

When the early dawn began to force slivers of dusty light through the thatch above us, the sounds outside became more dispersed and, at the same time, easier to recognize. I had dozed a little, but was fully awake to the departure of the elephants, trumpeting angrily at being driven by strange
mahouts
. A little later, the draft bullocks were driven out and then, as the light grew stronger, the horses passed in the distance, whinnying and dancing in distress. I thought of my roan, Pyari, and of Oliver’s great bay beast, handled by strangers and perhaps with cruelty, and for the first time felt more angry than frightened. Then, later again, horsemen galloped past us, very close, along the path to the garden pavilion.

‘Oh, Oliver! Moti? Will she be all right there?’ I asked. ‘They seem to be making towards the tower.’

‘She’s safe enough. She said she would leave for Cawnpore, and by now she should be well on her way. Even if she were here, she’d be all right so long as she kept her temper, but she’s liable to throw something at them.’

I remembered her reception of me, and smiled. ‘Yakub will have told her why we did not reach the tower. She’ll have left by now,’ Oliver said again, as though reassuring himself.

Some time after this—the sun was already gaining strength and I was sweating as I lay half asleep with my face buried in my arms—I thought I heard a faint scream, but no one else stirred and I said nothing. By then, the shouts and noise from the house had almost ceased, and I forgot the half-heard scream as we became aware of the smell of burning.

‘Oh, Oliver! Oh, the house!’ Emily wailed. ‘Oliver, they have set fire to the dear old house.’

‘Blast them for destructive swine!’ cursed Charles, but Oliver said nothing. Beside me, I felt his body stiffen, but he said nothing.

Of that day of heat and fear, of thirst and cramped discomfort, my recollections are acute. Even now, I sometimes wake at night gasping for breath because my nostrils are full of dust, straw and the scent of fire.

The sun rose, swiftly and inexorably, beating down upon us, despite the shade of the little copse in which we lay. The thatch gave us protection from the glare but none from the heat, which was intensified by the airlessness. We could move if we wished to; lie on our backs, stomachs or sides, but every movement created such a choking fog of straw dust that we found cramp almost easier to endure. The thatch was full of rustlings and small movements, and as the light grew, insects of all kinds emerged to run across our faces and hands and tangle themselves in our hair.

The baby slept, a deep uneasy sleep. We had laid her, practically naked, on her shawl, and Emily and I took turns to keep the insects away, the light filtering through the worn thatch serving us to this extent. Sometimes she rolled about disconsolately, uttering little cries, but all in her drugged sleep.

Poor Charles suffered the most, I think. Already raw with prickly heat and suffering from a series of unpleasant boils, he was unable to find comfort but lay sweating profusely and enduring agonies of irritation to save us from the suffocating effects of any movement he might make.

All of us fought thirst. I began to long for water very early in the day, at about that hour when we should have been enjoying fragrant tea on the verandah. I determined to say nothing, knowing that all suffered alike, but when I dozed my troubled dreaming was all of water: of streams cascading down green hillsides, fountains spilling back into rounded basins, leather buckets pouring their limpid contents into the irrigation canals in the garden—even of raindrops beating against window panes. So preoccupied was I with thirst that I felt no hunger at all. Just below us lay a great quantity of ice, stored up from the brief winter frosts, but even if one of the men had risked leaving our hiding-place in daylight, or if we had been able to burrow through the lower layer of thatch on which we lay, a pickaxe would have been needed to free the ice from its bed, and we had none. The thought of it there, just below, tortured me all day.