“He was cleaning out their den but neglected to secure the gate to where they were being kept. The male broke in and leaped on his back.”
“Yes, of course.” Sahira nodded knowingly. “It’s how they subdue prey when hunting. They must have seen him as encroaching on their territory. He’s lucky to be alive.”
Mr Cops gave her a sidelong look. “Indeed. The beast held on with its teeth. Only the swift action of two of my men saved Croney’s life. They beat the creature off with a rifle butt – couldn’t risk shooting it in case they hit him.”
Sahira leaned forward, eager to hear the rest of the tale. “What happened next?”
“He was rushed to the doctors and they stopped the blood loss before it was fatal. He’s only just emerged from Guy’s Hospital but I’m afraid he’s a changed man,” Mr Cops said despondently.
“He was never that keen on the animals to start with,” murmured Mrs Cops. “You made a mistake there.”
Mr Cops humphed. “You aren’t to mind anything he says, Miss Clive; the experience of almost being leopard supper has sent him half-mad.”
“You know you should let him go,” said Mrs Cops, lips pursed in a thin line.
“What’s a man to do though, Mary? I can’t send him away – no one will employ him now. I have to watch him, keep him away from the bigger animals. What else is there for him?” Mr Cops said, clearly exasperated. Sahira sensed it was not the first time they’d had this conversation.
When Croney arrived in response to the bell, Sahira saw why people might be reluctant to bring him into their household. The unfortunate man was an alarming sight, his face bearing the puncture scars of leopard’s teeth and scars from its claws. Perhaps it was not the scars, though, but his unpleasant expression, looking at everyone and everything with bitter resentment, that limited his employment opportunities? Escort duty didn’t appear to be Croney’s favourite choice of occupation either. He muttered darkly about having better things to do on a Saturday night as he set off northward through the busy streets to Whitechapel.
Sahira remembered the honey and vinegar advice Mr Cops had given her earlier. “I’m sorry to be a bother. I much appreciate your kindness in seeing me back to the orphanage.”
He scowled at her, pale blue eyes blazing through the puffy red scarring on his face. “Not kind. ’Tis orders. You’re the child who likes them devil tigers, aren’t you?”
“My father caught them and I travelled with them from India. Yes, I do like them.”
“We shouldn’t have them near people,” Croney said gruffly. “They should stay in the jungle.” Sahira noticed now that he had difficulty with his left leg. They would make an odd sight, both of them limping along.
Look people, she wanted to explain to the curious onlookers, the true cost of daring to handle God’s most dangerous creatures. They were both veterans of that peculiar kind of profession.
And, given the chance, she would add that you couldn’t blame the animals for following their instinct. She certainly bore the elephant that had crushed her leg no grudge.
Sahira hoped she could sweeten Croney’s attitude to her tigers and persuade him to see they were there through necessity rather than by choice. “You might have a point, sir, about it being best to leave them in the jungle. We would have left them in the wild but they were stealing goats from a village and people feared it might be their children next. So they had to come here, you see?”
“Hah! Told you.” Croney waved in the general direction of the Tower behind them. “Not right having them here. Their souls are wide open to evil. They’re possessed. You can tell that by looking in their eyes.”
“I don’t think so.” Sahira had often read fury in the eyes of a captive tiger, but not anything evil. They weren’t creatures with any concept of right and wrong, so how could they be judged by human standards?
“I know so.” He pointed to his scars as if that settled the matter.
Sahira decided she would only make an enemy if she tried to debate the question further. They limped on in silence until he left her at the door of the orphanage without so much as a nod in farewell.
CHAPTER 7
Sahira was the object of much envy that night in the girls’ dormitory. “You really saw the tigers?” asked Emily, hugging her knees to herself as she sat on her narrow bed. She twirled the end of her white-blonde plait. “Cor, what was that like, eh?”
Sahira combed her hair out, hanging her head upside down to get to the tangles at the back. “It was wonderful. They’re called Rama and Sita.”
“Rama and Sita?” Emily asked, clearly keen to know more.
“My father named them. After a famous couple from an old story they tell in India – a prince and his beautiful wife.”
“And you’re to go back to see them again?” asked Ann, struggling to tame her curls into a braid for sleeping.
“Come here,” beckoned Emily. She expertly divided Ann’s hair and made a stubby plait at the back of her head. Behind the three girls, in the places nearer the door, the younger ones were already in bed. The eldest were allowed an extra fifteen minutes before they too had to turn in. Matron was already nodding off in her armchair in her little office. This was the closest the three could come to a private moment in the orphanage.
“Oh, what would I give to see so many wonderful animals!” sighed Emily.
“You’ve never been?” asked Sahira. “But the menagerie is only a short walk away.”
“It costs so much to get in, especially if you’re a family with five children. We were never able to spare the coin.” She grimaced, recalling something unpleasant. “And Dad liked his gin too much to put anything by for us.”
It seemed remarkable to Sahira that Emily’s parents, when they were alive, had placed their own pleasures first. Was this how English families behaved? she wondered. Her parents had spent so much of their time teaching her and taking her exploring; she hadn’t wanted for anything. Maybe she had a chance to give something back?
“Mr Cops said I could have tickets for my friends.” Sahira had already promised herself that she would not give the passes to the Newtons. Mr Cops was wrong: bullies shouldn’t be bought off. They had far too much they didn’t deserve already. “If he comes through on his promise, I’ll make sure you’re first on the list. You two – and Ned.”
“Really?” the girls squealed excitedly in unison. “That would be the best thing that’s happened in a long time,” Emily said. “And it’s sweet the way you notice the boot boy. He’s been so much happier since you arrived.” Emily sprang up from the bed and hugged Sahira. She was always much more impulsive than the quiet and careful Ann, Sahira had learned. “And thank you. By the way, while you were gone, Ann and I salvaged what we could from your green dress.” She pulled out a length of elephant ribbon from her pocket. “The material was badly ripped but it might do for a petticoat if you don’t mind the colour.”
Sahira took the ribbon and ran it through her fingers, elephant following elephant like you sometimes see them, trunk entwined with tail of the one in front. “What’s wrong with green?” she asked quizzically.
“It’s just that petticoats are usually white,” Emily said matter-offactly.
“Why?” Sahira asked.
Emily frowned. “Now you ask, I don’t know!”
“Green is a perfectly nice colour and white shows the dirt so quickly,” Sahira said.
“Then you can make yourself one when it gets back from the wash,” Emily offered.
“Yes, maybe I will,” Sahira smiled. “Thank you for rescuing it. That gown was one of my favourites.”
Ann eyed Sahira’s locked trunk with interest. Sahira kept it shut, not because she feared any of the girls would steal, but she had no faith in Matron, the Newtons, or even Mr and Mrs Pence. “Do you have any more in there?” Ann asked.
“Oh yes,” Sahira replied.
“So what will be your Sunday best now?” Ann’s curiosity was getting the better of her.
“What do you think Mr Pence will think of peacocks?” Sahira asked, a twinkle in her eye.
Emily and Ann both burst out laughing. “Oh, I can’t wait to see his face!” said Emily.
Ann slipped under her covers. “Sahira, I’ve been meaning to ask, is it your habit to sleep on the floor?” She asked the question delicately, probably fearing to upset Sahira’s foreign sensibilities.
“No, of course not, but Matron told me a girl had died in that bed. I didn’t want to sleep on the same mattress.” Sahira wrapped herself in her blanket, preparing for another uncomfortable night. Jeoffry circled three times and settled down beside her.
Emily and Ann exchanged a look. “That’s true – it was hers,” said Emily. “But she died in the workhouse hospital. Mr Pence doesn’t like the bother of nursing us when we fall ill and sends us off to that institution. No one ever comes back.”
Sahira felt terrible being pleased that a girl had died elsewhere. “I’m sorry – that’s so sad.”
Ann shrugged, but her eyes sparkled with tears. “We all miss her; she was so full of life and mischief when she was here, but it’s common enough to get sick. We just have to hope we end up in a better place than this in the next life.”
Sahira picked the blanket from the floor and spread it on the bed. “That isn’t hard to imagine. In God’s house are many mansions, so my father told me. And none of them look like Mr Pence’s orphanage.” She said a quick prayer for the soul of her predecessor, shooed the cat over to make room, and prepared for the first comfortable night she had spent for months.
Sahira didn’t so much dream as daydream in that space between sleeping and waking when the world was quiet and the sun only just contemplating rising. Jeoffry had already left to start his day down in the kitchen, bothering Ned for scraps, so she felt lonely. Thinking of the elephant dress, Sahira let the creatures wander through her imagination, all those she had seen, from the rich man’s painted one, wearing a silken howdah and jewelled harness, to the poor farmer’s beast of burden decorated with mud. She missed them. Shire horses were well enough but they were no substitute for the gentle giants of Indian streets, carrying loads to market or logs for buildings. There were none in the menagerie at present but they weren’t unknown in England.
“Are you awake, Sahira?” Emily rolled over to face her.
“I am now,” replied Sahira with a smile.
“You’ve a funny expression – distant, like you’re somewhere else.”
Sahira sighed. “I wish I were.”
“What are you thinking about?” whispered Ann from the next bed over.
“Elephants,” Sahira said wistfully.
Ann laughed softly. “It is Sunday morning before six and you are thinking of elephants! Of course you are!”
“I’ve never seen one,” said Emily. “Doubt I ever will.”
“Oh, but you might.” Sahira sat up, blanket draped over her shoulders like a cloak. “My father told me a story about the first elephant ever seen in London, not counting the ones the Romans might have used in warfare. It came here hundreds of years ago.”
“Romans?” Emily exclaimed, a note of uncertainty in her voice.
Sahira realized she was in danger of digressing. “That’s another tale. This elephant, the very first one we know about, was a present from the King of France to Henry III, the monarch who also got the leopards-who-may-have-been-lions.” That made Sahira wonder: had word gone out among European monarchs that the English king liked exotic beasts or were they all laughing behind their hands at giving this less than successful ruler yet another thing to worry about?
“Leopards-who-may-have-been-lions?” asked Emily.
“They used the same word for both so to this day no one knows what he was given. Funny, isn’t it?” Sahira added.
“What about the elephant?” asked Emily, keen for Sahira to continue her story.
“Just imagine the elephant walking slowly into the Tower, large ears flapping,” Sahira mimed the actions as she spoke, “trunk raised in awe at its new home in the menagerie. So solemn, so wise, it probably did not much enjoy its new life in damp, drizzly England.”
“How do you know this?” Emily’s question betrayed a mixture of surprise and doubt.
“Oh, that’s simple. Because a monk drew a picture of it in his book of animals revealing it to be an African rather than one of the more familiar Indian elephants.”
“I’m not familiar with either,” muttered Emily to Ann.
Sahira found that hard to imagine, but the girls came from such a different world to her. “My father saw the illustration in a college library when he was a student in Cambridge.”
“Ooo, Cambridge, is it?” Emily’s tone was gently mocking. “I told you she spoke like a toff, Ann.”
“Is that being a toff?” Sahira shook herself, remembering she was mid-story. She could return to that subject later. “Anyway, he said it was one of the reasons he became an expert in animals. You can tell the breed, he said, from the big ears. He thought it impressively accurate for a time when they still thought unicorns and griffins were real.”
“They aren’t?” asked Ann. Sahira wasn’t sure if she was joking.
“No. But what I want to know is, what was the elephant’s story? How did it get from the plains of Africa to end up in a small pen in a city at the other end of the world? No one knows the tale and the elephant died a few years later of drinking too much wine. Clearly, the keepers had no idea what to feed it.”
“What are you supposed to feed elephants?” asked Ann.
“Not wine – though it was surprising how long that idea stuck with animal handlers here. My father said that there were to be many more drunken elephant catastrophes to follow until someone put two and two together. He told me that zoologists like him were only just beginning to treat animal diets scientifically – that was why the creatures he caught and shipped survived when so many others didn’t.” Sahira stopped talking, only realizing now that all the girls in the dormitory were listening to her story.
“Do you like elephants, Sahira?” asked a little girl down the far end of the room. “They sound scary.”
“They are excellent and strong.” Sahira reached under the covers and rubbed her aching leg. “Though I count myself lucky that I was trod on by an Indian rather than an African one.”
The bell rang in the hallway, signalling that it was time to get up. Sahira was already out of bed, digging through the contents of her trunk. She shook out her peacock dress. Compared with this gown, the green elephant one was a study in restraint. A peacock with fanned tail was embroidered on back and front in silver thread on royal blue. Her mother had thought it a perfectly vulgar article, but her father had encouraged Sahira, making the argument that she would only be young once and had time to develop a more sober taste.
“My love, Sahira is going to be mixing with the proud memsahibs when she goes to school in England. Why not give her a few fine feathers?” He had intended to send his daughter to a boarding school in Bath but that plan had been buried with him in the Atlantic. He had always claimed he was as poor as a church mouse (why these mice were particularly poor he had not explained), yet he was convinced his father would foot the bill once he met his granddaughter.
“If you can charm the old fellow, Sahira,” her father had said as they leaned on the rail watching the brown coast of Africa slip by, “you’ll do much to heal the breach made by my marriage.”
The peacocks hadn’t been part of that plan – a simple white dress with only a trim of swallows had been chosen for the first family visit. She was to keep the peacock one in reserve, like an army’s big siege guns, he explained.
Sahira’s mother had shaken her head, saying he was too optimistic.
Father had refused to be daunted. “We’ll turn up unannounced. The old man is too much of a gentleman to turn ladies away.” But they had not had a chance to turn up at all; only news of her parents’ death was sent to Fenton
Park. Would Lord Chalmers even grieve? There was certainly no sign as yet that he cared what had happened to his kin.
Ammi, Baba. Sahira swallowed, but the lump would not leave her throat.
A cool hand touched her shoulder. “Are you all right, Sahira?” asked Ann.
She was sure she would never be completely all right again. “I was just thinking of something my father said.”
Ann nodded in understanding. Every girl here had a similar loss to mourn and knew well how grief could take you unawares. She picked up the dress that Sahira had draped on her knees.
“Oh my! This is very fine – like something for a princess in a play!” exclaimed Emily, coming to join Ann.
Sahira’s spirits lifted at her friends’ expression. “Do you think this will vex Mr Pence?”
“Without a doubt,” said Emily. “It’s far more fancy than your green one.”
“Have you ever seen a peacock?” asked Ann.
“Many of them – noisy, annoying creatures they can be too. And that’s just what I intend to be.” Sahira took the dress from Ann and stepped in. Emily deftly did up the row of mother-of-pearl buttons at the back.
Ann stepped back to admire the effect. “You look too fine for this orphanage.”
Emily nodded in agreement.
“All of us are.” Sahira gave them a rueful smile.
Ann’s face clouded in doubt. “Perhaps you should keep it hidden and wear something less challenging this time?”
“And spoil the surprise? The Pences and Newtons are doubtless hoping they’ve destroyed all my finery.”
“True. It would be a shame to miss out on twisting their tails,” said Ann.
Sahira smoothed down the fabric. “What do you think would happen if I turned up on my grandfather’s doorstep, as my father had planned?”
“You have a grandfather?” asked Emily.
“One I’ve never met, but he’s a rich and important man – a lord, actually. Would he take me in dressed like this?” Sahira held out her skirts.
Emily poked Sahira in the ribs. “That – or send you on stage. I’ve not seen finer costumes even in Covent Garden.” She clasped her hands to her chest. “Wouldn’t it be divine to be an actress, to have a hundred costume changes and the public eating out of the palm of your hand?”
The Tigers in the Tower Page 7