by Joan Aiken
Rousing old Abdul, who dozed in the forecourt, she returned home and found that Colonel Cameron, whom she had left asleep in a basket chair, had woken and was pacing anxiously about the main room of the bungalow.
“You should not have left the house without informing me!” he said harshly. “At any moment now, insurrection and bloodshed may break out—this is hardly the time to be gadding around Ziatur in the small hours.”
Scylla raised her brows. She was, however, too weary to trouble about defending herself, though she was not sure by what right he berated her.
“Excuse me—I am very tired—I am going to bed,” she answered shortly, trying to move past him in the direction of her room.
“Where have you been?”
“At the hospital, with our maid, who was dying.”
Removing the burqa that covered her hair, she lifted her hands. Cameron exclaimed, as he saw them:
“Good God, girl! You cannot go to bed with your hands in such a condition as that! They must be treated! What is the matter with them?”
“I think I must have taken the infection from Bisesa,” she said tiredly. “You had better keep away from me.”
Sharply he questioned her about the maid’s illness: when it had come on, what course it had taken, what clues, if any, Bisesa had let fall as to what might have caused it. “Did she mention anything she had eaten or drunk?”
“No, she gave us no clue at all. Her last words, poor child, were an apology for trying on my new sari. I had intended to give it her anyway—for her wedding,” Scylla said, her voice breaking with fatigue and grief.
“Sari?” he demanded swiftly. “You don’t mean that red affair with the pearls—the one Mahtab Kour sent you?”
“Yes, why?”
“She had tried it on? Where is it?”
She gestured with her head.
Cameron strode into her bedroom and, snatching up a riding whip that lay on a chest, he gingerly poked aside the muslin wrappings and inspected the gauzy rose-colored garment, holding a lamp near it so as to get the sheen of its light over the fabric; then, raising a fold of material on the handle of the riding crop, he very cautiously sniffed at it.
“Mahtab Kour never sent you this,” was his verdict. “I’ll stake my head it was that scheming snake Sada.”
“Sada? But why—?”
“It has been dipped in datura poison. You may think yourself fortunate, my child, that rose color does not suit your complexion—that you did not put it on,” Cameron said grimly.
Lifting the bundle of material, holding it balanced on the riding crop, he carried it into the garden, took out flint and tinderbox, and set fire to it. Then he stood watching it flare up until the last shred of gauze was consumed.
Returning to the house, “Have you any bread dough set to rise?” he asked Scylla.
“Bread? I daresay Habib-ulla may have a pan of dough—why, in heaven’s name?”
Without bothering to answer, he went off to the kitchen and came back with a big earthenware crock of soft, raw dough, set to rise for the morning.
“Habib-ulla will be very angry,” Scylla said, half laughing, as Cameron pulled the soft dough apart into two large shapeless lumps.
“Doubtless he would prefer his memsahib to retain the use of her hands,” Cameron laconically replied. Having pulled and stretched the two pieces of dough into flat cakes about a foot square, he wrapped each piece around Scylla’s inflamed hands, pressing the soft stuff close to the wrist. “Now I need some cloth; yes, table napkins will do,” and he bound these over the flaps of dough to hold them in place.
“What is datura?” Scylla inquired as he knotted the second napkin into place.
“Thorn apple. One of nature’s deadlier poisons. The sari must have been steeped in a strong infusion; if you had worn it you must have died like your maid. Raw dough is a fair specific against its external use, fortunately.”
“Good God,” Scylla said slowly. “But why should Sada wish my death?”
Somehow the news came as no particular surprise to her. She had already felt convinced of Sada’s hatred.
“Oh, why, why? Who asks why in Ziatur?” Cameron said impatiently. “She wishes the Angrezi to leave; she believes you—or Miss Musson—might be a threat to her position. Now you had better try to sleep.”
“How am I supposed to undress myself with my hands tied up like plum puddings?” Scylla demanded.
“Unless you wish me or your brother to unrobe you, you will have to sleep in your clothes,” he replied coolly.
“I wish no such thing,” retorted Scylla, much affronted; adding, “Where is Cal, by the by?”
“Asleep.” The impatient, fatigued note in his voice made her study the colonel with some compunction. He looked deathly tired; his cheekbones seemed more prominent than ever, for his eyes were sunk back in their hollows; his dark red hair was in a considerable state of disorder and damp with sweat.
She said apologetically, “Indeed, I am very much obliged to you, Colonel, for your skill. I do not believe even Miss Musson knew of this remedy. My hands begin to feel better already.”
“Keep the dough on all night,” was his only answer. “Stay—you should have some brandy now. It will help you sleep.”
And, with the impersonal efficiency of someone administering a draught to a sick animal, he assisted her to swallow a sizable dram of cognac, holding the glass carefully to her mouth. Scylla protested and spluttered—she was not accustomed to drink spirits—but he sharply adjured her not to be a ninnyhammer and tipped the liquid down her throat.
“Now—go and lie down on your bed.”
She could only obey, observing to herself with some indignation that Colonel Cameron conferred his kindnesses like punishments; but no doubt he considered the Paget twins a dead bore, always having to be rescued from some predicament or other, and a thoroughly inconvenient responsibility; rather dismally Scylla reflected that he had reason to do so. Moreover it was all too plain that the placid course of their existence in Ziatur had come to an abrupt end. Being Miss Musson’s old friend, Cameron no doubt considered that he had a duty to see her and her young companions safely out of the place; though whether he could bring Miss Musson to see the necessity of this would be another matter.
Having reached this unsatisfactory conclusion, Scylla succumbed to the effects of the brandy and the day’s exhaustion and alarums; she fell into profound and dreamless slumber.
* * *
When she woke, many hours later, it was to find the bungalow empty and silent. Venturing to strip the bread dough from her hands, she discovered that the inflammation had gone down; Colonel Cameron’s remedy had been remarkably efficacious. If only we could have used it on poor Bisesa! Scylla thought sadly.
Having washed and changed her clothes, Scylla went out to the veranda, where she found Cal, deep, as usual, in his epic poem on Alexander the Great. He nodded as she came out but hardly looked up. Of Habib-ulla, who brought her tea, melon, and chupattis, Scylla demanded:
“Where is the Mem Musson? Is she still at the palace?” and, learning that this was the case resolved to go immediately in search of the older woman.
“Shall I come too?” inquired Cal, who, having successfully reached the end of a canto and vaguely realizing that they were faced with an untoward situation, was prepared to render assistance, but Scylla said:
“No, thank you, love, for in any case you could not enter the women’s apartments. You had best remain here, in case Miss Musson comes back by a different route and we miss one another.”
She pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves to protect her tender hands; the effect was bizarre with the burqa and hat.
“Well, don’t be too long,” Cal said, “or I shall be uneasy about you. There’s a devilish queer feeling about the town today.”
Scylla had noticed it too
. A deathly hush lay in the streets; only the sound of wailing and fumes of incense filled the air.
In the palace the atmosphere was even stranger and more unnerving. Agitated whispers ran through the hush; distant gongs boomed; saucers of incense burned before every god and goddess in their niches along the winding corridors; and marigold petals were scattered everywhere, adding a sickly fragrance to the general miasma. Colored rice crunched under Scylla’s slipper soles as she walked the accustomed route to the princes’ schoolroom; not that she proposed to give them any lessons on such a day of mourning, but she wished to see them and offer her condolences on the death of their father, to whom they had been very attached.
No condolences were needed. She saw the princes indeed—and the sight was enough to drive the blood from her heart and the breath from her lungs.
Hideously swollen and distorted, with blackened faces and starting eyeballs, the boys lay sprawled together on a divan in their workroom. Ranju had died clutching at his stomach; Amur was doubled backward, his face contorted in a final rictus of agony. The room smelled acid with vomit. Both bodies were stiff and cold; it was plain they had been dead for many hours.
“Oh, God! My God!” Scylla whispered with dry lips. She turned to see Nuruddin, the Maharajah’s physician, standing behind her.
“A very sad sight, is it not, Mem Periseela?” he greeted her smoothly. “Those two devoted boys, in grief for their father, both swallowed poison in order to follow him. Was not that a touching and beautiful deed?”
Scylla looked at him stonily. She remembered the tray of sweetmeats that Sada had sent the boys. She thought of the rose-colored sari.
“I do not believe they killed themselves,” she said. “I believe they were poisoned.”
“I must strongly recommend that you do not go uttering these thoughts aloud in the palace, memsahib,” Nuruddin replied. “Indeed, if you are a sensible young lady you will go directly back to your home; now, at once.”
“I wish to find Miss Musson,” Scylla replied curtly, and walked past him.
“You will find your friend with the Maharani Mahtab Kour. If you value her safety,” the physician said, “you will advise her also to return home.”
Mahtab Kour’s part of the palace was even more shrouded in gloom than usual, and suffocatingly stuffy. Scylla paused at one point by a shuttered window and pushed the slats of the shutter aside to inhale a little outside air, but then she wished she had not done so. Outside, in a courtyard of the zenana, a huge pyre was being built; shuddering, she guessed at its purpose. Averting her eyes from it, Scylla hurried on.
She found Mahtab Kour, her portly bulk shrouded in white mourning robes, rocking to and fro, moaning and lamenting. Her women were about her, and all her immense quantities of jewels, robes, boxes of stuffs, cosmetics, carpets, chests of coins, diamond-studded slippers, silk shawls, embroidered bedspreads with jeweled fringes, silk floor cloths, and other personal belongings were being brought before her on trays, so that she could arrange for their distribution among various friends and relatives, who surrounded her with bowed beads, joining loudly in her lamentations.
A new pet slave girl (the little Persian, Laili, had died of her infected ears) huddled dolefully against her mistress, gazing up with large, hypnotized eyes at Mahtab Kour, down whose face tears incessantly streamed, who continually murmured invocations to the gods, at the same time continuing in quite a businesslike way to make arrangements for the disposal of her possessions.
“And this packet of gold dust for my friend the Mem Musson,” she directed; a small silk-wrapped package was handed to Miss Musson, whom Scylla now noticed for the first time, sitting swathed in her black burqa among the shadows behind the queen; she held a Bible, marking the place in it with a finger, and looked exceedingly angry, harassed, and weary.
Bowing respectfully to the queen, Scylla slipped around to join her guardian and sat on the floor beside her.
“Those hopeless, silly heathen!” Miss Musson exclaimed in English—Scylla had never seen her so shaken out of her customary calm. “One might as well talk to a herd of cows—they take no notice at all. They seem utterly bent on self-destruction.”
Scylla could not wonder at it. What real pleasure or purpose did the existence of these poor women hold, that might constrain them to wish to hold onto it? And their future lot, as castoff retainers of a defunct queen, would be dismal indeed; death might well seem preferable to a life of prostitution and ignominy.
“At least, Highness, let me take this little one away with me?” suggested Miss Musson, who apparently, in the course of the night, had most uncharacteristically given up on the major issue. She petted the head of the slave child on Mahtab’s lap.
“Take my little Lehna? But then, whom shall I have for a pet and plaything in the next life?” demanded the Maharani in astonished and injured tones.
“My dear Queen, in the next life you will not require cheering and solacing—you will not require playthings,” the American lady told her forcefully. Mahtab Kour appeared wholly unconvinced. However after a long argument she finally agreed that little Lehna, at least, should be spared from the funeral immolation.
“Quick, take the child away before the wretched woman changes her mind!” hissed Miss Musson to Scylla. “Go now; take her back to the bungalow; I will come when I can.”
“I wish you would come too,” Scylla murmured urgently. “Pray do, dear Miss Musson! There seems no more that you can do here. Colonel Cameron is exceedingly anxious about your safety. And so am I!”
The older woman shook her head.
“I cannot, child, while there is the least hope of saving any of these miserable, stupid, enslaved women. I will come only when I am convinced there is nothing more for me to do. But do you take that child away!”
When the child Lehna realized that she was to be separated from her mistress she struggled and screamed. Scylla did not care to drag her bodily; she stood nonplused. Mahtab Kour said in an exhausted voice:
“Go with the mem, Lehna! She will take good care of you.”
“I do not wish to leave Your Highness!” wept the child.
“I am to be burned on a great fire; that is not a fate for such a little one as you.”
“I wish it, I wish it!”
Suddenly Mahtab Kour recaptured some of the royal command that must have dignified her at a younger age. Her eyes flashed.
“Go when I tell you, child!”
Silent and humble, Lehna crept from the room with Scylla.
But as they were crossing a courtyard high among the battlements of the women’s quarters Lehna suddenly dragged her hand away from Scylla’s clasp and, shrieking, “I will join her this way, if not the other!” she ran to the low parapet and threw herself over it. Appalled, rushing after, Scylla leaned out and looked down. Twenty feet below, injured and moaning, the child lay on the cobbles of a lower courtyard, the very one where the pyre was heaped; one of her legs stuck out at an unnatural angle; plainly it was broken. Gritting her teeth, Scylla looked about, found a staircase that led to the lower court, and ran down it. But already when she reached the spot where Lehna had fallen some of the queen’s women had picked her up and were carrying her away.
“Her Highness says, if the child is so determined to die with her, then she shall have the honor to accompany her on the pyre. Go, leave us, mem.”
Silent, sick at heart, Scylla walked away past the huge heap of wood and bamboo and thorn splinters. She saw men pouring great jugs of oil over it, to make it blaze up as rapidly as possible when lit. A platform had been erected in the middle, and a flight of steps was being constructed, leading up to it.
Supervising this work with an expression of calm approval and satisfaction was the Rani Sada Kour. She was wearing, not her usual robes, but a high-waisted European dress of striped jaconet and a Parisian bonnet, over which a veil was draped. She
sparkled with diamonds, which were set in her hair, her ears, her nostrils, around her neck, her wrists, her ankles; she looked, Scylla uncharitably thought, like the pictures of chandeliers in the Bombay Gazette. The queen appeared slightly startled at the sight of Scylla, her gaze flickered from top to toe, like the tongue of a snake, paused on the white gloves, and then she said smoothly:
“Surely this is no place for you, Feringi lady? I did not look to see you here today.”
“No?” Scylla retorted, making no attempt to keep the hostility out of her voice. “Nor I you, royal lady—unless, indeed, you had thought fit to join Mahtab Kour on the funeral pyre. But that, I gather, is not your intention.” She let her eyes rest for a moment, ironically, on the young queen’s fashionable attire.
Sada’s glance darkened. She said, “Beware your insolent tongue, Angrezi, lest I order it to be cut out. My lord Mihal will do all I ask him.”
“Allow me to congratulate you on your good fortune,” Scylla said coolly. She swept Sada an angry curtsy and walked on, turning to say as an afterthought, “I believe I have you to thank, Rani, for a beautiful sari that was sent me. Unfortunately an accident befell it—I regret to say that it was all burned up.”
And I hope you suffer a similar fate, she thought, remembering poor Bisesa’s death agonies and the two wretched little princes. She hurried on out of the gate, leaving Sada staring after her, furious and puzzled.
Old Abdul at the main entrance demanded, “Where is the Mem Musson?”