by John Masters
A more terrible idea flowered in the mesmerizing fire. Murder was difficult enough to punish in India even when the murderer was taken standing over the corpse with a reeking knife in his hand. But it might be years before another such chance as last night’s would even cause anyone to think that murder had been done. On the road none knew where a traveller came from or where he was going to. A man left his home to visit relatives, a two-month journey, to stay there three months and return. At his home they would not become alarmed until a year had passed. Then they might make enquiries. But how? There was no way. They could only accept that the traveller had vanished—snake bite, tiger’s fangs, cholera, something—unless the missing man was a jewel carrier. Then the bankers would take a hand. What had happened to that fellow with his head on one side? Who was he? Who was Ali?
Chandra Sen stirred, and William saw that he was not asleep. He said, ‘Patel-ji, I can’t sleep.’
‘Nor can I, sahib.’
‘I was thinking about this Ali. I did not tell you that he’s someone’s brother. The lopsided man thought I was he. And the murderers were calling him when they were after me. We might be able to find out who he is because there are not too many Mohammedans in the district.’
The patel’s sad eyes turned away and looked at the fire. ‘I do not know. He does not live close to here.’ A long silence. ‘Sahib, you remember you told me that the Sikh said that a Mohammedan travelled with him to the ferry?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Mohammedan left him about the time he entered the grove?’
‘Yes. We asked the ferrymen, don’t you remember? They did not recall him, and we don’t have any good description.’
‘I think he was the same man who led you to the grove, the lopsided man.’
William stared at the patel. It might be true. If it was, the lopsided man had crossed the ferry in company with the Sikh and his son. That mattered, because it would give the direction in which the lopsided man had been travelling.
He climbed to his feet and walked stiff-legged to the fire. The ferrymen stopped talking and stood up. He said to them, ‘I asked you about a lopsided man who carries his head on one side, remember? We think he may have been with the Sikh when he crossed in your boat. Now do you remember him?’
The old ferryman half closed his bloodshot eyes and screwed up his face in an ostentatious effort of memory. His hands trembled, and William thought he must have been in an opium sleep when Chandra Sen’s summons awakened him. At last he said, ‘I—we’re not sure, lord.’
The eldest of his sons, a man of about forty, broke in, ‘I saw the man the sahib described. He was with the Sikh. I remember now, because he stood just in front of me in the boat. I’d forgotten him—even his neck. He was so ordinary.’
William returned to his resting-place. Chandra Sen had heard the exchange. The lopsided man must be found.
In an hour light began to glint on the leaves and draw grey and silver stripes across the water. A low bank of mist covered the river, and brightening ripples showed where fish rose. The dawn breeze sent a horizontal streamer of smoke creeping along the grass from the fire. William got up and stretched. Chandra Sen was already afoot. Sher Dil stood by the smoking embers. The ferrymen had fallen asleep and lay like twisted corpses on the grass. A group of early travellers with a cart creaked down the opposite bank. William walked to his horse and mounted. Chandra Sen and Sher Dil followed him back along the road.
He recognized the grove at once and turned into it. The fire had been there; he had lain here, with the lopsided man beside him; one of the Brahmins’ fires had been there, another there. A dozen men trudged up the road, digging tools in their hands.
‘This is the place?’ said the patel.
‘Yes. Here.’ He pointed out where everything had taken place. Chandra Sen called, the tenants crowded close and sucked in their breath and muttered, ‘Horror!’
‘Let them spread out,’ William said to Chandra Sen. ‘Let them search the whole grove for signs of recent digging. The bodies must be buried here somewhere. And look for marks where they might have been dragged into the jungle. Let them search well.’
The party split up at Chandra Sen’s quiet direction and walked through the grove, peering at the ground. William went to the place where the big fire had been and put down his hand. Someone had scattered earth loosely over the ashes. He picked the earth away with his fingers until he had uncovered the ashes. They were still warm.
The light grew, and the tall trees began to throw shadows across the grove. The searchers came back one by one. Nothing, nothing, no sign. William stared past them. They were waiting for his next orders. There was only one place anyone could have dug here and not left a trace.
‘Dig under the fire, here.’
‘Very good, sahib,’ Chandra Sen said. ‘As you wish.’ He indicated the fire with his toe and repeated, ‘Dig here.’
‘Here?’ asked Bhimoo the watchman. ‘Under the fire? They have thrown earth on the ashes, which is a wise precaution at this season against jungle fires. But no one has disturbed it otherwise, except the sahib just now.’
William hesitated. They were looking at him oddly. Sher Dil’s face was loud with anxiety that he should not make a fool of himself. He said shortly, ‘Dig here, dig deep.’ He flushed and turned his back.
Chandra Sen’s body-servant spread a roll of carpet and brought out and prepared a hookah. William and Chandra Sen sat together, puffed in turn at the hookah, and watched the men digging. The patel pushed away the mouthpiece. ‘That man with the twisted neck, sahib—I think he is the key to this. I wish we knew more about him.’
‘Yes.’ William thought back. ‘All we know is that he’s a Mohammedan, if this Ali is his brother. Besides, the Sikh said he was, supposing your theory’s right, and he is the fellow who accompanied the Sikhs as far as the grove and then vanished. But’—he stopped and put his head in his hands—‘all the murderers were calling on Ali as their brother, and they were certainly all not Mohammedans. The fat man was a Hindu, a chaudhri.’
‘You know, sahib,’ the patel said quietly, ‘sometimes people use the word “brother” as a greeting to a friend.’
‘Yes, of course. Well, this lopsided man—the Sikh suggested he was a jewel carrier.’
‘Ah, that’s very interesting.’
In the preceding sixty years of anarchy, jewels, especially diamonds, had increasingly taken the place of other currency. As the gem market fluctuated in different parts of India, bankers and brokers sent jewels around the country. They employed professional jewel carriers for the purpose. Although scores had died or been robbed on the road, no one had ever heard of a jewel carrier betraying his craft.
Chandra Sen continued, ‘Do you think he saw through your honour’s—h’m—disguise?’ He handled the words like delicate china.
‘I don’t know. He might have. He seemed to suspect I wasn’t Gopal.’
‘Men of that profession survive only by keeping their eyes open. But they usually also keep their mouths shut.’ The patel sighed lightly and called to the diggers, ‘Have you found anything yet? How deep are you?’
‘Three feet and more, patel-ji, and nothing yet. The earth hasn’t been turned here though, not for a long time.’
William set his face and limped to the edge of the hole. As he watched, a man swung down with his hoe. The earth came away cleanly and showed white beneath. Men ran up and crowded round the hole. The earth flew; every few minutes fresh diggers jumped down to replace the men in the pit.
They handled the bones reverently as they uncovered them and placed them out in a row on the grass. William stared down at them with a sense of fright. These bones were dead and grey-white, picked clean by worms and ants. The diggers found vestiges of cheap leather shredded into the soil; and discoloured patches of cloth, already half earth, which crumbled at the touch; and five cold skulls; but no hair, no skin, no flesh.
The sun beat down. Sweat ran down the di
ggers’ backs. Their faces were strained, for this was the desecration of an ancient grave, perhaps, that they were committing. In times of great calamity, or after battles, when the survivors had no leisure to cut the wood and no oil to make the wood burn, Hindus were sometimes buried in common graves like this.
Chandra Sen’s face was solemn. ‘These died a long time ago.’
Plague might have done it, or cholera, or smallpox, or famine, or war. William wiped his forehead. He had a splitting headache and sat down suddenly to ward off an attack of vertigo. He must go on and find out.
He said, ‘Get all your men, Chandra Sen. Dig up everywhere. Dig up the whole grove, especially where there are the marks of old fires.’
For a long moment the patel hesitated. The expressions of the men working set sullenly. At last the patel bowed his head. ‘It is an order.’ The digging began again.
The nine mounted police from Madhya arrived in a loud clatter. They were all the police William had for the whole district, and they were in reality only semi-trained cavalrymen, with little knowledge of police duties. He sent them out at once to search the roads for the merchant and his companions and the lopsided man.
An hour later Mary came. She slipped down from the saddle, gave the reins to her groom, and walked toward him. He got up quickly and hobbled over, holding out his hands. ‘Don’t look, dear. It’s ghastly.’
She took his hands and held them. He saw that she was looking over his shoulder at the lonely bones. Her mouth set and she turned her eyes to his. He was afraid to meet them. She said, ‘You were right. I knew they thought you were seeing things. And now you can show them—Daddy and all the rest of them!’
He looked up in astonished wonder. ‘I was right? Show them what?’
‘You’ve found out something really big. Oh, it’s horrible, but you have discovered it, because you wouldn’t let that girl die!’
His mind whirled. He had not been thinking in that fashion. She went on, ‘Now you’re going to catch this gang. They must be a gang. And you will save so many more people’s lives.’ She looked straight at him, and her eyes were like sapphires. With her, he would succeed all right, and make George Angelsmith smirk the other side of his scented, damned face!
She said in a businesslike voice, ‘I’ve sent the bullock cart with our baggage on to Madhya. I’ve brought blankets on the horses, and some food. How long do you think you’ll have to stay here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll stay with you. Here——’ She gave him brandy and a cold chicken and warm chupattis. She brought out salve and bandages and patched the wounds showing on his face and hands. Then she sat beside him and held his hand and did not speak.
The digging continued through the afternoon and evening. Grumbling women arrived from the scattered holdings, bringing food. They set lanterns on the ground and held torches. The men dug. There were places where no one could dig, where the tree roots grew thick together; but in all the open spaces they burrowed into the earth. Travellers passed along the road; the police brought more in; William scanned them all closely and asked them questions. None had been among the party of murderers, he thought. Their recollections of other travellers were vague and useless.
On the ground the row of skulls and thigh bones grew longer. A second row had to be started, a third. Some of the bones were older than the first they had uncovered, so old as to be pockmarked with the small holes of organic decay. Some were so fresh that the maggoty flesh still clung to them, and the strangler’s mark was clear on their necks. They had all been mutilated. Where flesh survived, great driven holes showed through chest and belly. Every major joint had been broken back on itself. Big men. so smashed and folded, took no more space than a child; children, broken, became small square bundles. There were no women recognizable. The strong sweet smell of death filled the grove. The diggers dug with the ends of their turbans flung across their mouths and spat frequently. Mary watched with lips tight and blue eyes afire in the lamplight.
As the second dawn broke, Chandra Sen’s face was as grey as the light, and his hand lay cold on William’s arm. ‘I am sorry. You were right.’
William counted. There were sixty-eight bodies—rather, sixty-eight skulls. None could tell now how many bodies there might have been. Some had lain here years beyond reckoning, two centuries perhaps. The newest was not more than a week in the earth. The bodies of the Sikh farmer and his son had not been found.
The strength had gone out of William’s legs. Sher Dil helped him on to his horse. ‘Chandra Sen, let your men rest,’ he said feebly, ‘then bury all these again. Cause Hindu and Mohammedan prayers to be said over the grave. I will send back the priest from Kahari as I pass, and the maulvi from Madhya.’
His head sunk on his chest, he let the horse walk at its own pace down the road. Miles passed and he did not speak. He did not feel the burning sun, or hear the robin in a tree, or see the cheetal stag arching across the path ahead. He did not notice the travellers on the road who stared up at him, or the men in the fields, and he did not know that his wife was at his side. He remembered her; she had tried to cheer him up yesterday, when only a few skeletons lay on the grass. But this—this was monstrous. He had believed her then, believed in himself. But all the warmth had ebbed away as the picks swung.
A mile out of Madhya she touched his arm gently. He started in the saddle and turned to her. Her eyes were full.
‘William.’
‘Oh! You … I’m finished. In disgrace.’ He had not slept for two nights, and the road swung like a pendulum in front of him. ‘I thought I knew everyone, everything. I could have said, I have said, that not a thief can move in my district without my knowing it. For three years I’ve sat here thinking that whatever sort of a fool I was at books I knew my people and I looked after them. Meanwhile sixty-eight of them have been murdered not a day’s stage from my headquarters.’
She held his arm tightly and the horses pushed together. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not! Most of those poor people were killed years ago. No one can blame you.’
He shook his head, shaking off the excuse. ‘Yes. But a gang of six—seven, perhaps—has been committing wholesale murder during my three years here, and I’ve known nothing! I’ve made lots of mistakes, and I can face them and myself only because I thought I knew the way ordinary people here lived and moved and died. I thought I could help them.’
He did not speak again until they reached the bungalow. Dismounting in silence, he gave the reins to the groom and turned to laugh harshly in Sher Dil’s worrying face. ‘Sixty-eight, Sher Dil! You counted?’ The bitter laugh echoed behind him down the bungalow’s central passage.
Mary ran after him. ‘William, won’t you lie down? Let’s talk about it later, when you’ve had some sleep.’
‘I’ve got something to do first.’
In his study at the back of the bungalow he reached for a sheet of thick parchment, found the quill, and at the third try dipped it into the ink. She watched the trembling in his hand die slowly away. His wrist and strong fingers grew rigid. The black letters marched in slow time across the paper:
To: The Agent to the Governor-General for the
Kaimur and Mahadeo Territories.
From: The collector of the Madhya District.
Sir, I much regret to report that I have this day …
He lifted his head. ‘Your father will like this. After what George Angelsmith has told him he’ll be expecting to hear that the woman at Kahari became suttee, but this is even better. This is just about what he’s always been expecting from me, isn’t it?’ He bent again over the paper. She did not answer but sat on the other chair and her tears fell into her lap.
Chapter Seven
‘Smile for me please, William,’ she said, an early morning two weeks later. ‘You don’t know how nice you look when you smile. George won’t arrive till the afternoon, and even when he does there is nothing to worry about. You’re such a serious old thing.’
‘Nonsense. I feel sometimes that I’m the old one! I believe lots of wives do.’ In a rush of words she tried to hide her chagrin at touching one of his many raw spots. They were standing side by side on the verandah of the bungalow, looking out over the garden. George Angelsmith was coming from Sagthali with some message from Mr. Wilson. William did not know what the message was, but he could guess, and did not find it easy to smile today, even at Mary.
She said, ‘I’m dreading his coming too, really, you know, because we won’t be alone then. I love this. George seems to carry a whole station around with him—all the rivalries and attitudes and habits.’
William nodded, and a smile came of its own to his lips. She had been too young to remember her first three years in India. Born in a little place in Bengal, she had gone home at the age of three with her ailing mother. Her mother died in England. A year ago Mary had arrived out here once more, to join her father, so all she knew of India was Sagthali. Sagthali was a ‘station’—a place where, beside but apart from the Indian community, there had grown up barrack cantonments for the army and bungalows and offices for the headquarters of the civil administration. In a station there were never less than ten English families, and often many more. Sagthali had over forty.
In a station, suburban England enclosed you, and you saw India only through those windows of the mind that you chose to scrub clean and look through. In the outlying district it was different. One Englishman, the Collector, to whose charge the civil government of the district was confided, lived alone in a headquarters town, such as Madhya. Madhya had a population of five thousand, all Indian. If the Collector did not like Indians, he liked no one. If he despised India, he despised everything. In a district an Englishman could be alone—and lonely; or he could have a hundred thousand friends. His happiness rested in his own hands, and his wife’s if he was married. Many English women hated district life so much that they turned their husbands into embittered drunkards.