by John Masters
. . . Commander-in-Chief of the Army of His Highness the Rajah of Kishanpur. Major-General Rodney Savage. Major-General Sir Rodney Savage, K.C.B., perhaps, if the Queen approved of his work in Kishanpur. Four thousand rupees. Four hundred plus four hundred plus four hundred plus--it went on for ever. It was too much money, too big a job. He couldn’t do it.
Goddam it, he could do it, and do it well. He wouldn’t have to report to that bloody sodomite of a Dewan, but would be responsible only to Sumitra. Now he had to face it: the people hated her, and the better he did his work the firmer he would clamp her rule on to them. But it was silly to think like that. If the Company was going to support her as Regent--and the Governor General had just announced through the Lieutenant Governor that it was--then nothing on God’s earth could upset her rule. He would just be doing his professional duty, on a wider field than he might ever reach in the Company’s service. He’d jump about thirty paralytic years of promotion, and have the work while he still had the zeal. It would be a great task, and exciting, and would stretch his capabilities to their utmost: to burn out corruption in a well of corruption--Sumitra could have no idea of the Dewan’s extortions and perversions, or she’d have sacked him long ago--to make these few thousand men contented and efficient, worthy of their profession, a fighting force welded together by comradeship, trust, and confidence, like the sepoy armies; a force fit to take on any enemy.
He stopped short and shook his head, puzzled. Kishanpur need fear no enemies. A century or more ago it would have been different: the British not established as a paramount power, India a turmoil of warring rajahs. Then, by God, there would have been real work for him to do--gentleman-at-large, adventurer-in-ordinary. Frenchmen, Italians, Dutch, Portuguese, Irish--they had written their own and their employers’ names all over India. But now the Kishanpur Army would be a mere showpiece, a typical rajah’s toy, expensive and useless. That wasn’t like the Rani. He shook his head again.
No matter. He could live in splendour and retire in magnificence with her decorations glittering on him--and perhaps that red ribbon from the Queen.
How would Joanna like it? How would Robin grow up, removed from all contact with English people in these next few years before he went home? Rodney could send them both home, immediately---- He stopped dead in his thoughts and stared at the water. Joanna didn’t want to go back to England, and he had no right to let himself think of ordering her off. She would like the money, but she would hate being the only Englishwoman in Kishanpur. He fidgeted uncomfortably; the Rani wouldn’t mind if Joanna never came.
And there was Robin without English playmates. And he himself would never serve with the 13th Rifles again. He could make something out of the Kishanpur troops, but he could never make them the 13th Rifles. That settled it.
“Captain Savage, I wish to talk with you.”
He started, looked up, and suppressed a desire to swear. Caroline Langford, dressed in russet brown, stood by the tree. He made to scramble to his feet, but she shook her head and sat down near him. As he had done, she looked slowly round at the bright tents, the green falls, and the red afterglow in the sky.
She said, “Was the Field of the Cloth of Gold more beautiful? But that’s not what I want to talk about. Yesterday Major de Forrest and I absented ourselves from the Installation and instead visited the city. We went to Sitapara’s house.”
Rodney locked his arms round his knees and rested his chin. Sitapara was the woman at the second-storey window the night of the riot; he’d found out her name the next day, for everyone knew her as the madam of a high-grade whorehouse. On Saturday evening, when relating the story of the riot, he had mentioned her name but not her profession. Still, de Forrest at least must have guessed what sort of place he was taking this young lady to.
Miss Langford continued. “Of course I’d heard of her when I was here before, but hadn’t met her. We asked the way and reached her house with no trouble. A little man followed us, looking worried, but did not try to stop us. Sitapara is a very striking woman--and she did not seem surprised to see us. We talked in French, of a sort.”
“French!”
“Yes. She was a harlot in Chandernagore for a few years, Captain Savage, will you please stop pretending to be shocked. I am a grown woman and I spent two years in a hospital at Scutari. The soldiers came in from the Crimea with wounds, but half of them stayed with venereal diseases they contracted in Turkish brothels. I am not going to talk round any subject, and I will make myself clear. Sitapara used to be the mistress of the French Governor of Chandernagore, and her French is as good as mine. I went to her because I hoped she could prove that the Rani and the Dewan murdered the old Rajah.”
Rodney stared at the dark water and thought, Does this have to come? Already, fifty hours after greeting the other British guests, murder seemed a dirty crime--whatever its motive--and in his bones he knew the Rani had committed murder. He had not faced it in his thoughts about taking the post of commander-in-chief. His mind had accepted other grounds for deciding to refuse; anything not to have to reach down to that, drag out the ugly thing, and look at it.
He mumbled, “Why go to all this trouble? Why stir up filth? No one cares, and the Company are going to support her.”
“Because the old Rajah was my friend! Because you told us on Saturday that you’d seen the wall-eyed man who shouted to you in the riot hanging on a gibbet three days later. Because the Dewan tried to shoot Sitapara. Because the Commissioner gave me no satisfaction about the Silver Guru and what he said to the crows. As for the Company, they would not dare to support her if I can prove that she is a murderess.”
He kept his head turned away; it was nearly dark and he could no longer see across the river. She caught her breath and went on less vehemently, “Unfortunately, Sitapara had no legal proof.”
“Why did she say she knew, then?”
“Partly because she knew the old Rajah exceptionally well; he was her father. I’d heard that too, and Sitapara confirmed it. Her mother was a famous courtesan. The Rajah fell in love with her as a young man--and she with him, Sitapara says. At all events, Sitapara hears a lot, or her girls do. She has a dozen of them, and all the court officers go there, get drunk, and talk too much to prove they are in the inner circle at the fort. One of them saw the Rani push her husband off the roof walk. What no one understands is why she murdered him. She had great power, through him. Her little boy is the only heir the Company could possibly recognize. Sitapara’s suggestion is that she is a loose woman, really promiscuous--the kind that must have scores of lovers --and the Rajah found out.”
Rodney hunched his shoulders and blurted before he could stop himself, “I don’t believe it!”
She kept her voice flat and unemotional. “Nor did Sitapara, in her own mind. And that leaves the assassination, and all the judicial murders which followed, quite pointless --unless the Rani has such an insane lust for personal power that she did it for that.”
Rodney sat holding his knees, thinking miserably of Sumitra and the golden weeks since January the second. Above the falls the water was a sheet of dull steel; bats nickered by, and the river grumbled below in the blackness. He said, “What else did you find out?”
“Sitapara could tell us nothing about the Silver Guru. She agreed with me that he must have known something, but she insisted he’s a true holy man. She couldn’t think of any reason which would make him work with such people as the Rani and the Dewan. There’s nothing big enough, she says. Then she told us that weird things have been going on since the New Year. Everyone is on edge. People whisper of stars falling, dogs running about headless in the streets, vultures flying in threes across the moon--things like that. No one knows where the rumours come from. And”--he heard her turn to face him directly--”a young officer said one night in her place that one of the top three here--the old Rajah, the Rani, or the Dewan--was bribing Mr. Dellamain, and had been for a long time.”
That he could believe, especially since a
chance fall of light had uncovered for him the fear behind the Commissioner’s imposing manner. If they had been bribing him for a long time, the murder might have been long-planned, and the bribes the price of Dellamain’s support for the Rani in official quarters. It made a big difference exactly which of the three was giving the bribes. But again, why the murder at all? Who benefited? The bribes could be for something else. There was the salt monopoly to encourage smuggling; rajahs did slip jewels to British officials who “forgot” to apprise the Governor General of their more outrageous vices and extortions. The girl had uncovered a real dungheap in her determination to drag Sumitra down. And what could she know of all the circumstances to be so self-righteous?
Turning to watch her face, he said with malice, “The Lieutenant Governor was in Kishanpur till yesterday evening. Why didn’t you tell him?”
The near-darkness softened the firmness of her bone structure, and she looked less ruthlessly self-assured. She answered slowly, “I did consider it. My uncle, Lord Claygate --Lady Isobel’s father--is an important man. The Lieutenant Governor would at least have to listen to me--and if I had evidence, he would have to do something. But everyone knows that I’m unbalanced! Unless I have proof, he’ll do nothing. And proof I am going to get! Sitapara is as determined as I am. She’s promised to send me a message if she hears of anything definite enough for us to act on.”
“Us? You mean you and Major de Forrest?”
“Major de Forrest? Oh, he just said he’d come to the city with me. I meant anyone who will help me.”
She meant him. She meant to drag him into this crusade, with herself cast as Peter the Hermit, the madam of a knocking shop as Walter the Penniless, and the Rani and the Commissioner as the infidels.
Of course, if he became commander-in-chief of Kishanpur, he could probably find out--and destroy Sumitra, who had offered him the post because she liked him. Joanna would have a fit at the idea of spying on Dellamain. Even if he did unearth a great scandal he would only be marked down as an interfering busybody. The Company was too big to know everything, and too powerful to relish having the fact underlined by one of its own servants. Anyway, he wasn’t going to accept the Rani’s offer, and if Miss Langford thought such a lot of de Forrest, let her use him. Damn it, nothing could happen until Sitapara sent word, and then he’d have to judge the facts and see what was his duty.
She said suddenly, “It is your duty, sir.”
He shut his mouth with a snap. After a moment he said coldly, “I am not prepared to spy on the Commissioner or on Her Highness. May I escort you back to camp?”
She said nothing. He rose to his feet, pulled her up, and walked at her side away from the river. After a few yards they all but cannoned into Victoria de Forrest; she must have been near enough to hear at least the mumble of conversation, and to have seen them under the tree. Her eyes glinted oddly as he bowed and apologized. Heavens, did the stupid little tart think he was flirting with Caroline Lang-ford? If it had been light enough to see the expression on his face, she would have known different!
7
Friday, February the twenty-seventh, was the fourth and last day of the hunting. Many tigers had been killed, and the arrangements for their slaughter were by now little more than a drill. At four o’clock each morning the naked beaters trooped off in hundreds to surround the appointed square of jungle. At seven the cavalcade of elephants began to form up in an avenue between the tents. At that hour dewdrops trembled on each blade of grass, the tents stood knee deep in a lake of mist, and the sun touched the bright flags.
At half-past seven the procession moved off; by seven thirty-five the trees had swallowed the hiss and rumble of the falls. Thirty or forty minutes later the hunters reached the starting line and spread out along it; then the drive began.
This day Rodney rode with Geoffrey Hatton-Dunn on an elephant near the centre of the line. The mahout, naked but for turban and loincloth, sat below and in front, astride the great neck. A shikari, one of the state’s paid hunters, crowded into the howdah with them; he wore a patched black coat and a loincloth, and stank of garlic. Twenty yards to their right the Maharajahs of Tikri and Gohana shared the next elephant; beyond them were de Forrest and Caroline Lang-ford. Twenty yards to their left the Rani, Mr. Dellamain, and the chief shikari of the state rode on Durga, the Rani’s favourite elephant. Beyond in both directions the line stretched away through thin forest, the khaki and grey of the hunting howdahs patterned by the gaudy colours of the princes’ coats. The elephants were dull black, the trees green and yellow, the shadows warm blue.
Rodney murmured, “Wouldn’t Julio love this!”
Geoffrey drawled, “He’d go wild, old boy--prob’ly shoot the mahout.”
The chief shikari glanced at the sun and listened for a moment to the silence ahead. The beaters should be well in position. The Rani spoke a word; the old man cupped his hands, his goatee beard waggled up and down, and he sent a shrill call quavering across the roof of the jungle. “My lords--forward!”
Each mahout grunted, kicked with his bare heels, and brandished his ankus. Each elephant heaved one slow foot forward, waved its trunk, and began to move. The yellow tiger grass swirled along their flanks; the teak branches swept overhead and tugged at the howdahs; the carpet of teak leaves crackled like a pistol battle. Rodney stood in the front of the narrow howdah, tense and alert, gripping his favourite rifle, a double-barrelled ten-gauge that fired a spherical ball. Geoffrey, similarly armed, stood in the back. Between them the shikari carried two spare rifles, both loaded; powder flasks and canvas bags were slung across his shoulders. Rodney caught the Rani’s eye, and she smiled briefly over to him. He’d have to see her tonight and tell her. He’d managed to put it off so far, but now it could not be avoided. He’d tell her tonight.
A confused noise broke out somewhere ahead; that was the beaters, beginning to move. He wondered whether there would be any tiger left by now, then remembered that the shikaris had been trapping for weeks before the hunt began. There would be tigers, crouching in pits, angry and hungry, there would be men up trees with ropes to spring the traps and let the tigers out. Then the tigers would run away from the loud noise of the beaters towards the faint noise of the elephants. The State of Kishanpur would ensure that its illustrious visitors went home satisfied. After all, they had come a long way, just for this.
The elephants swayed forward in irregular line. In front the shouting increased, and a boom and clangour as the beaters banged metal pans and struck the tree trunks with sticks.
Durga stopped. The mahout jabbed the point of his ankus into the hide behind her head; Rodney saw the man’s set teeth and the sweat shining on his shoulders, and the Rani’s blazing eyes. Durga took three slow paces and stopped again. She curled up her trunk and her head wove from side to side. To right and left of her the mahouts halted their elephants to keep in line.
Behind Rodney, the shikari muttered, “Whore of a great sow. Can’t think why Her Highness keeps her. She’s played up every single day.”
There was no wind, and the jungles smelled hot and dry. Ahead the ground fell away for a hundred yards, then tilted up in a long even slope. Up there the sun momentarily picked out the white of a beater’s loincloth among the trees. The shikari muttered urgently, “Sahib, sahib, look--there!”
He thrust forward, pointing with his chin. Geoffrey raised his rifle and set his face in an expression of boredom, his monocle swinging free at the end of its ribbon. Half-right, at the foot of the slope, a deeper gold moved in the yellow grass and was gone. Rodney’s heart beat painfully. He gripped the stock of his rifle and stared into the grass. The shikari cried, “There! There!”
A Royal Bengal tiger--ten feet long, male, heavy, and white-ruffed--ran crouched past a tree trunk. It ran with head and tail down, elbows up, and stomach close to the ground. The waving grass swallowed it. All the elephants fidgeted, catching fear from Durga as she fought to turn round, oblivious of the ankus hook driven through her ear. A
s the mahout tugged at the flesh, she curled her trunk up and over in an S, opened her jaws, and trumpeted. All the mahouts jabbed and bawled; all the elephants sidled back and trumpeted. The appalling thunder screamed along the line; it filed the hunters’ nerves and crackled in their brains so that they lowered their heads to it and screwed up then-faces. Away to the left a rifle exploded with a heavy boom --and another. The echoes sprang back from the trees. Rodney, leaning over the howdah and searching the grass, saw a black bar move in the shadow of bushes, and lifted his rifle.
The tiger burst from a patch of thorn. The sun burnished him, made him a rippling glory of black and gold, and turned the white ruff at his jowl into a golden halo. He stretched his stride and came on like a river in the sunlight, his head high and his jaws half-open. Geoffrey whispered along the stock of his rifle, ‘“Tyger! tyger!
Before he could fire, the tiger swerved and ran under their elephant’s belly. Geoffrey swung round to face the back of the howdah. The tiger sprang up from out of sight, dug his foreclaws into the hide over the spine, and jerked with his hind legs at the loose folds of the elephant’s fork. Opening his jaws wide, he roared so that the blast of fetid breath hit them with the quake of the sound. As he hung, he roared again, and his yellow eyes glared at them in a fire of fury; his hind claws sliced long raw strips of meat from the elephant’s loins.