Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  NIGHTRUNNERS OF BENGAL

  JOHN MASTERS

  Copyright © 1951 The Estate of John Masters

  The right of John Masters to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN 0 285 63552 2

  To

  THE SEPOY OF INDIA

  1695-1947

  Author’s Note

  Although most of the incidents in this story of the Indian Mutiny are drawn from local tradition, official reports and contemporary letters, this book is a work of fiction. My object has been to make the fictional whole present a true perspective of fact--the facts of environment, circumstance and emotion. In general, the people actually met with in the story, and the places they visit, are fictitious; the people and places that remain offstage are or were real, and notes on many of them are included in the glossary. Where I have had to use a Hindustani word I have tried to make its meaning clear in the context; the precise meaning of such words, and their pronunciation, are given in the Glossary.

  PART ONE: The Upstairs Room

  1

  Rodney reined back to a walk and sighed. A thin crowd, scattered round the holy man’s tree, was blocking the Pike ahead. He saw a horse tethered by its reins to an outer branch of the tree and recognized it, and sighed again; a little of Caroline Langford went a long way. He brought Boomerang to a stop and peered over the heads of the crowd. The day’s work was done, the year’s work done, and he was in no hurry to get back to his bungalow. He might as well see what was going on.

  Men yawned in the washed afternoon sunlight, and stretched their arms. Brown naked children splashed in the puddles. Women glided down to the river, carrying bundles of clothes on their heads. The holy man sat on a raised earth platform, revetted by loose stones, which had been built up round the bole of the peepui tree. Miss Langford stood at the edge of the platform, facing him. She was young, and of medium height, and the severity of her grey jacket emphasized her slightness of body. A hard black hat perched on the front of her head, which was small, and she carried a riding crop in her hand; her wrists were thin and brittle-seeming. She stared steadily at the Guru, and Rodney noticed that habitual concentration had cut a frown deep into her forehead. She was so cold, so English, against the warm colours. He saw that there were a couple of sepoys of his regiment, the 13th Rifles, Bengal Native Infantry, in the crowd. He waited patiently.

  The holy man faced north, sitting erect, his legs crossed under him and his hands limp at his sides. He was naked except for a dirty loincloth well below his navel. A fresh wind blew down the river, and raindrops glistened on him. He breathed slowly, the bony face immobile but not at peace. His cavernous eyes were fully open, and Rodney, musing, imagined them as focused on something far away. They did not absorb these living greens and browns of Central India; surely they sought something beyond the curve of the plains and the cities hidden in the north--and did not find it. Perhaps their pale fires were the glitter reflected from the ice walls and fluted snow battlements of the Himalaya, the silvered trumpet-horns of a forgotten monastery?

  Caroline Langford’s voice, startling in the depth of its pitch and timbre, interrupted Rodney’s reverie. She spoke slowly at the holy man, in Hindustani.

  “The people say that animals understand you. Is it true? How do you do it? I wish to know the truth.”

  Rodney’s eyebrows rose, and he looked at her with new respect. She was the cousin of the wife of an officer in his regiment, and a mere visitor to India. She’d been away from Bhowani for six months, as a guest of the Rajah of Kishanpur. She must have studied hard there, because that Hindustani was surprisingly good. After six years in India, Rodney’s wife Joanna knew twenty words, and could use her verbs only in the imperative mood.

  Miss Langford looked up and caught his expression. Her frown deepened, and she said curtly, “Good afternoon, Captain Savage.” The sepoys glanced round then and saluted hurriedly; they were both in his company and he knew them well. He smiled back and winked slightly, in token that he disavowed the miss-sahib’s blunt inquisition.

  The holy man’s body glowed in the diffused light under the tree. The rain had cut runnels in the ashes and dirt, and there the brown skin was wrinkled gold, the leprous patches smooth silver. His forearms and hands were like parts of a bright statue. The crowd waited in silence. The holy man would answer in his own good time, if he wished; and when he did, the white woman might wish he hadn’t.

  The waiting and the silence became embarrassing. Rodney glowered down at the unyielding determination of her profile. She had chosen an unpredictable man to pester with her questions. There was a yogi who lived in meditation at the other end of the city; he would never break his silence to answer her, or anyone. There were charlatan fakirs who trooped up and down the Pike in naked insolence; they would beg a rupee and give her a sarcastic blessing. But this old leper was the Silver Guru of Bhowani; and he was in his way a true guru--a teacher--and might explain to her what he knew--or he might flay her with ironic praise and threats of damnation. His temper was growing noticeably worse as the years passed. The townspeople and sepoys feared him, but pointed him out to visitors with proprietary pride. His influence over Indians of every religion was enormous and widespread; as far east as Patna, as far north as Meerut, they had heard of the Silver Guru of Bhowani.

  Rodney looked away over the heads of the crowd, at the steam drawn by the sun out of the decaying brick and mud walls of the city, at the terraces by the river, dotted now with brightly clothed women and scavenging pariah dogs, at the swirl of a fish under the bank, and up through the branches at the sky. Thousands of feet above the city and the river two kites planed in slow circles; a troop of minivets twinkled and stirred the leaves, and cheeped swisweet sweet sweet; he saw no other bird anywhere.

  The Silver Guru raised one hand and turned his eyes down on Miss Langford. The minivets left the tree in a cascade of scarlet and gold sparks, and flew away. Boomerang stamped and tossed his head, and the snaffle clinked; the mare began to sweat and shiver and back up, tugging at her looped reins.

  A crow landed on the earth platform, with one harsh caw and a creak of wings. It cocked its head, its eyes sharp and brown, and hopped forward. Two more joined it, then three, then another one. Rodney’s scalp tingled and he looked quickly around. To west and south black dots pockmarked the sky, swelling out and taking shape as they came closer--crows, flying fast to the peepul tree. They landed beside the Silver Guru in fours and squadrons until they overflowed the plinth. Then they crawled on top of one another at the feet of the crowd, and in silence flapped their wings and opened their beaks. Their eyes glinted with an awful obedience. Rodney knew suddenly that at a signal the slithery wings would smother him, the dirty beaks peck his eyes out. The air under the tree stank of putrid meat.

  The Guru laughed harshly and held out both silvered hands over the crows. “Many have come. Are you all, then, the ghosts of dead tyrants? ... You? ... And you? ... And which one ruled this morning in the east, eh?”

  As if his voice had hammered off invisible shackles, the crowd, so still and taut, burst into struggle. They breathed hard and fought to get away while Boomerang squealed and Rodney leaned over to hold the snorting mare. Even then the girl hesitated, looking at the Guru.

  Rodney’s nerve snapped, and he shouted, “Don’t be a fool! Mount!”

  She rode pale and silent beside him, and did not speak till, at the cantonment limit, she said, “I don’t understand.”

  “There are many things you do not understand.”

  An English girl had no business to involve herself with gurus and fakirs and the edges of magic. Besides, he had lost his nerve and
she must have noticed it. He spoke curtly, and meant to be rude, but she showed no anger. Frowning intently, she did not speak again until they reached the foot of the Hatton-Dunns’ driveway. There she raised her head and said, “I will find out.”

  Rodney saluted coldly and trotted on alone towards his own bungalow. His chin sank forward on his breast, and the black vision of the crows shone in the puddled road. He shivered. He did not understand either. Hadn’t old Bulstrode talked of something similar, done by a fakir up country in ‘42--and the fellow saying the crows only gathered when catastrophe was in the air?

  As he turned in under the bare branches of the gold-mohur tree at the entrance to the drive of his bungalow, a potbellied brown infant ran out of the bushes and stumbled howling in his path. He reined in, dismounted, and picked him up. It was the gardener’s youngest son; tears coursed through the kohl round his screwed-up eyes.

  Rodney cried softly, “Ho, mighty one! Are you tired of life already? There, there, you’re all right.”

  The gardener’s wife hurried down the drive and took the child away. She threw Rodney a quick shy smile before adjusting the end of the sari to cover her face. He dropped the reins on Boomerang’s withers, whispered, “Go to the stable, boy,” and walked slowly forward.

  The bungalow, low and square and dull white, sprawled in the long tree shadows; a colonnaded verandah, ten feet wide and paved with red flagstones, encircled it. Short flights of stone steps, without balustrades, ran down at the front under the carriage porch and at the back under a covered passageway leading to the separate kitchen block. Rodney’s son, Robin, in a blue dress and a big straw hat, lurched across the grass on the right of the drive, yelling at the black-and-white kitten, Harlequin; the kitten skittered about like a mad thing under the spreading banyan tree, its bottle tail streaming. Moti, the ayah, waddled splay-footed along the side of the bungalow, picking at her teeth with a thorn twig, her dress sharp white against the purple bougainvillaea twined on the colonnades.

  Everything was all right; he forgot the crows. He saw no carriages waiting in the compound behind the house, and whistled gently with relief. Joanna’s gossip-and-lace factory must have dispersed.

  Sher Dil, the butler, tottered rheumatically out on to the front verandah and stood there in bent, dignified immobility, the general of the servant army. Lachman, the bearer, hurried down to take Rodney’s cloak. The assistant cook, the dishwasher, the water-carrier, the washerman, and the dogboy, who were smoking rolled-leaf cigarettes by the stable wall, scrambled to their feet, bowed, and put both hands to their foreheads in salaam. From inside the kitchen the cook shouted, “The sahib has come.” The gardener, crouched two hundred feet away among a mixed bed of larkspur and pink Clarkia, straightened his back and stood in meditation. The untouchable sweeper, squatting with basket and broom on the verandah outside a bathroom door, rose and made salaam. Jewel, the bull terrier bitch, pulled her head out of an unkempt oleander, barked twice, and returned to the interesting smell.

  Robin threw down his big hat and galloped erratically across the drive, shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” Two female voices called him back, one the ayah’s shrill “Baba! topi pher lagao! ek dum!” the other an English voice, nearly as high-pitched, with the same message. “Robin! Put your hat on again! At once!”

  Rodney caught his son, swung him shrieking to his shoulders, and looked up. His wife, Joanna, stood at the head of the front steps, the pink and white oval of her face set in a petulant frown. The sunlight touched a golden throat locket hung against the dark blue of her dress; one hand was pushing at the masses of her golden hair.

  “Rodney, put his hat on, please. He’ll get sunburnt and brown, like a subordinate’s child.”

  He put the boy down, jammed the hat on his head, and went up on to the verandah. Joanna said, as she presented her cheek to be kissed, “I don’t care if the sun is nearly down. He must always wear his hat out of doors.”

  She walked down the hall and into the drawing-room. Rodney shrugged, turned into the bedroom opposite, Lachman at his heels, and sat, yawning, on the edge of the bed. Lachman eased the bottle-green tunic from his back, then knelt, pulled off his spurred boots and strapped green trousers, and pushed slippers on to his feet. A smoking jacket of maroon velvet hung on the back of a chair, the tasselled cap on top, the trousers underneath. Rodney looked at his watch; an hour to dinner, three or four hours before he’d have to change for the ball--time enough to relax. Lachman held out the smoking kit for him, piece by piece. Sher Dil stood in the open doorway, supervising the operation.

  In the drawing-room Rodney dropped into a high-backed armchair. The lamplighter, who was also the night watchman, sidled apologetically through the jungle of furniture to light the oil lamps. A fire burned in the grate; Rodney stretched his toes, looked into the flames, and gathered comfort from their assurance that the hot weather was not due for a few weeks yet. He felt tired and realized he had not said a word to Joanna yet, not even to ask about her salon. He couldn’t be bothered. Sher Dil had brought the brandy; the bottle stood on the table beside him. He hesitated, glanced at her, poured out a glass as silently as possible, filled it with water, and drank.

  Joanna spoke, without looking up from her petit-point frame. “Did you have an interesting day in the lines, dear?”

  “Not particularly--drill parade, company accounts--but. . .” He did not want to remind himself of the crows.

  She said, “But what?”

  “A rather weird thing happened on my way back . . .”

  He told her and went on, his own mind ensnared again now that he had to try to make someone else see the reality of it. “Of course I’ve heard my father and Curry Bulstrode talk about even stranger things--but that doesn’t explain them. What do you think?”

  “Did you say Miss Langford wasn’t wearing gloves, or a cloak, or a veil?”

  “Eh? No--yes--I mean she wasn’t. I asked what you thought about the Silver Guru and the crows.”

  “Oh, it’s a trick, of course. That young lady must be spoken to. I’m surprised Lady Isobel hasn’t done it already. She must not be allowed to let us all down in front of the blacks.”

  “Joanna, will you please remember to call Indians by their race and caste, or, if you don’t know, ‘natives’?” He became angry, as he always did when this familiar subject came up, and he gripped the brandy glass more tightly. “God damn it, you ought to know better. We of the Company’s service live here all our working lives. We do our work and enjoy ourselves and lord it over the country entirely by the goodwill of the average native--especially the native soldier, the sepoy. If you even think of them insultingly, of course they know it and resent it----”

  “Don’t blaspheme, please. I’m sorry. But I think you’re too sensitive about it. And haven’t you had enough to drink?”

  She eyed the brandy bottle and did not look at all sorry. He poured out a peg, with deliberation.

  After a pause she continued in sudden vivacity, “Wait there. I’ll show you what I’m going to wear at the ball.”

  She edged between the furniture, the curve of her breasts parodied in the enormous billow of crinoline below. In a minute she came back and held up a low-topped dress, the satin slip shimmering through white tulle, three deep flounces at the left side caught up with loops of pearls.

  “And that will be over hoops, of course, and I’ll wear my big pearl earrings and the triple necklace with the sapphire pendant, and one of the fillets in my hair.”

  Rodney did a quick sum in his head; five months’ worth of his pay, transmuted into pearls, would be on show with the dress. Few other captains of Bengal Native Infantry adorned their wives in that style. Perhaps they did not love their wives; or perhaps they had too much damned sense to throw their savings into the great social competition. It was never a fair competition either; Lady Isobel Hatton-Dunn had a big allowance, a few others had private means of a sort. He stared moodily at his wife’s face and thought the petulance was beginning t
o make permanent creases.

  She turned the dress this way and that. He forced a smile and said, “Mrs. Savage, tonight you’re going to look like a queen.”

  “It is pretty, isn’t it? And Mr. Dellamain has booked three waltzes--with your permission of course, dear, but I knew you wouldn’t mind. He has only asked Lady Isobel for two.”

  Feet scampered down the hall, and the handle of the door rattled. Robin rushed in, in an embroidered nightshirt, his long near-white curls wet and plastered from the bath. Joanna snatched the ball dress up out of his way and put down her cheek. “Careful! Good night, my sweet child. Run along now and say your prayers and get into bed.”

  Rodney kissed him; his breath smelled cool and baby-sweet, and his wide eyes searched for something that could keep him here. “Want dink bandy pany! Yes!”

  Rodney pulled his ear. “No, you little toper. Off to bed with you!”

  Ayah led him out; Rodney poured another brandy. Great Dellamain the Commissioner, the lord of a million souls, the first prize of feminine intrigue--poor Dellamain, his dinner plates the Sangreals of society. The idea gave him a certain malicious pleasure because he did not like Dellamain; but then neither did any other man in Bhowani, and none of them could say why.

  Back at her frame, Joanna chattered on. “I hear Victoria de Forrest is going to wear a maroon dress--really most unsuitable. . . . Mrs. Cumming swears she saw Captain Hedges holding Victoria’s hand, near the Sixtieth’s manège at three o’clock yesterday afternoon--she said actually fondling it. He’s such a wild man, and she does look voluptuous. It’s a pity her father has not married again; that’s what she needs....”

  Rodney nodded drowsily. His mind wandered into familiar channels--details of next Friday’s parade . . . where on earth had Sepoy Manglaram’s bayonet got to? . . . When would the regiment get the new-pattern rifles from Dum- Dum . . . that would mean new cartridges, new loading drills. . .