Shadow of the Moon

by M. M. Kaye

  ‘You have nothing to thank me for,’ interrupted Alex curtly.

  ‘You mean because had you known that it was I you would not have saved me? Is that indeed the truth? If you had known - and knowing that I could not swim, must drown - you would not have gone after me?’

  Alex returned his look with eyes that were hard and level. ‘No. I would not have lifted a hand to save you.’

  Kishan Prasad bowed gravely as though he had received an answer that he both expected and understood. He said: ‘It is for that reason that I come to thank you. Not for what you did for me, but for what you would have done for one of my servants. There are very few who would have risked their lives for … a black man and the servant of a black man.’

  ‘You overrate me,’ said Alex brusquely. ‘There was no risk. I am a strong swimmer.’

  ‘And the sharks?’ asked Kishan Prasad gently.

  ‘You force me to admit,’ said Alex with a grin, ‘that I had clean forgotten that there might be sharks. If I had remembered it, I give you my word that I should not have jumped. So you see, you owe me nothing.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Kishan Prasad smiling, ‘willingly or unwillingly, you gave me back the life that the Gods would have taken from me. In the past I have intrigued against your race—’ He saw the sudden flare in Alex’s eyes and laughed, lifting a protesting hand: ‘Oh no! That is not evidence - I tell you nothing that you did not already know. And here there is no one to overhear. We two speak under the thorn tree. Your Commissioner will not move against me. That I know.’

  ‘And I also,’ said Alex bitterly. ‘Are you by any chance telling me that you have suffered a change of heart because I risked my neck to pull you out of the sea?’

  Kishan Prasad smiled and shook his head. ‘Alas, no. I have suffered no change of heart. In the name of my country and my people and my Gods I will do all in my power to pull down your Company’s Raj.’

  ‘And I,’ said Alex, ‘will do all in my power to get you hanged or transported - for the sake of my countrymen who govern your country.’

  ‘It is well,’ said Kishan Prasad gravely. ‘We understand one another, and we are not children.’

  He twisted a small ring that he wore on his right hand and pulling it off held it out to Alex. It was a trumpery thing of little value, fashioned out of silver in a curious design set with three small red stones that might have been flawed rubies. An odd ornament for the hand of such a man as Kishan Prasad. He said: ‘Will you wear this for me? As a token of my gratitude? It is worth less than ten rupees, but it is a talisman that may one day save you from much evil. If ever the day comes, as I pray it will, that the Company’s Raj falls and its charter for robbery and confiscation is destroyed, look on that ring and remember Kishan Prasad. For in that day - who knows - it may repay a part of my debt.’

  Alex looked at the outstretched hand with a frown in his eyes and made no attempt to disguise his hesitation. Then he reached out and taking it slid it onto the little finger of his right hand and said slowly: ‘I did not remember that there might be sharks when I went over that rail yesterday. But you would have had me take your place on that damned hen-coop when you saw them come. I will wear this because it is the gift of a brave man.’

  Kishan Prasad put his hands together, the finger-tips touching, bowed gravely above them and turned and walked away.

  13

  ‘We shall be in Calcutta tomorrow,’ thought Winter. ‘Only one more day - and then I shall see Conway!’

  It did not seem possible that the long waiting that had begun six years ago in the Long Walk at Ware could be over at last, and that in only two days’ time she would no longer be ‘Miss Winter’ or the Condesa de los Aguilares, but Mrs Conway Barton; driving away from the church with her handsome husband to live happily ever afterwards like a princess in a fairy-tale.

  The Glamorgan Castle was anchored off the Sandheads awaiting the first light and the turn of the tide when, with the pilot on board, she would begin the slow journey up the Hooghly to Calcutta, and Winter, lying wakeful in her narrow bunk, wondered if Conway would meet her at the mouth of the river or board the ship on the way up - Colonel Moulson seemed to think it possible.

  There had been a time during the voyage when she could not picture Conway clearly and his image had become unreal and lifeless - a shadow without substance. She could not explain why this should be so, and she had, obscurely, placed the blame for it on Captain Randall, though she could not have told herself in what way he was responsible. But at least it had been Captain Randall who had been responsible for reinvesting Conway with all his old glamour. The way in which he had brought this about was equally involved and quite as impossible of explanation. It had arisen out of his dramatic rescue of the Indian, Kishan Prasad …

  Winter had been in her cabin when Lottie screamed, and the sound had been muffled and indistinct. She had heard the thud of running feet on the deck overhead and had been aware of uproar and confusion, and then, through the open port, she had heard the cry of ‘man overboard!’ and had run up on deck to find it crowded with excited passengers and noisy with bellowed orders to stop the ship - to lower a boat - to come about—

  Whistles had shrilled, men had shouted, and Lottie had continued to scream. Winter had taken her by the shoulders and shaken her violently, which had proved instantly efficacious. Lottie had gulped, gasped, drawn breath and poured out the story. Kishan Prasad had fallen overboard - Lottie had seen it - and he could not swim, and Captain Randall had gone in after him.

  Winter had been conscious of a sudden cold shock as though she had been hit by something frozen and solid: an icy fist that lashed at her and was gone. She had released Lottie and run to peer over the rails, but the crowd was too thick and she could not see, and she had waited with a strange sense of breathlessness for what seemed like hours while the ship had slowed and circled back.

  ‘Just as well we ain’t running under sail,’ said Colonel Moulson. ‘If there’d been a breath of wind and we’d been carryin’ canvas we’d have left ’em miles behind before we could have heaved-to. Steam’s a marvellous thing, by George!’

  ‘Can you see them?’ demanded Winter urgently.

  ‘Not a sign. But we’ll pick ’em up the moment we get a boat out. Sea’s as calm as a billiard table; no danger at all, provided they keep afloat. Unless the sharks sight ’em of course. If that happens it will be all over with them. Saw a man fall overboard at Aden once. Sharks got him before we could lower a boat. Tore him to bits. Dreadful sight!’

  Mrs Abuthnot screamed faintly and Winter turned so white that the Colonel, afraid that she was about to swoon, hastily excused himself and hurried off to watch the boat being lowered and pulled smartly away under the charge of the first mate.

  The hour that followed seemed endless to Winter. The sun was moving down the sky and she watched the shadow of the wheelhouse stretch out across the deck and grow longer and longer. Then, from the mizzentop, a look-out with a telescope who had sighted the two men, and had been shouting at intervals that all was well, put his hands to his mouth and bellowed: ‘Shark!’ And once more the deck was in an uproar.

  Women screamed and wept and Sophie, who had conceived a passionate though secret admiration for Captain Randall, swooned and had to be carried below; followed by Mrs Abuthnot, whom affection for Alex, and the conviction that he was even now being torn limb from limb and devoured by sharks, had sent off into strong hysterics.

  Lottie having collapsed into tears, it was left to Winter and the ever-helpful Mrs Holly to minister to Sophie and her mother. But when Lottie brought the news that both men had been rescued in time and were being rowed back to the ship, Mrs Abuthnot, pausing only to take another strong dose of sal volatile and grasp her smelling salts, had hurried up on deck. Winter had followed more slowly. She had heard the shouts and cheers as she left the cabin, and Alex had stumbled down the stairs and passed her without seeing her.

  His face appeared drained of all colour
and drawn with exhaustion, and he walked as though he were drunk or drugged. The ship’s doctor hurried down after him, and Winter went up on deck where the first mate and various passengers were vying with each other to tell the story as Kishan Prasad had told it to them, with embroideries and embellishments of their own.

  Winter sat down in a deck-chair, her knees feeling unaccountably weak, and remembering that Alex had once expressed regret that he could not bring himself to murder this man whose life he had just risked his own to save, she was filled with a warm, glowing flood of admiration that went a long way towards expunging the memory of his disloyal attack on Conway.

  The admiration, however, had lasted considerably less than twenty-four hours.

  She had had no opportunity of speaking to him until half-way through the following morning, when at Mrs Abuthnot’s imperious bidding he had come to sit on the deck at her feet under the shade of the awning and to answer innumerable questions. ‘Of course it was exceedingly noble of you, dear boy,’ said Mrs Abuthnot, handing him a skein of embroidery silk to unravel, ‘but quite inconceivably rash. You could well have drowned!’

  ‘In a sea like a mill pond?’ inquired Alex lazily. ‘Nonsense. No one who could swim a stroke could have drowned in a sea like that, and I’m a strong swimmer. It was extremely pleasant after the heat of these decks, let me tell you.’

  ‘I see that you are determined to make light of it,’ said Mrs Abuthnot approvingly. ‘But I shall not allow that. To jump unhesitatingly to the rescue of a drowning man in a shark-infested sea was a heroic deed and worthy of the highest praise.’

  ‘Mrs Abuthnot,’ said Alex, handing back the skein of silk and receiving another, ‘I cannot masquerade as a hero to you, much as I should enjoy doing so. But as I have already been forced to point out to a good many people, I had entirely forgotten that there were such things as sharks. The possibility of meeting any had not so much as crossed my mind, and had it done so I do assure you that I should not have gone in after that man. I should have contented myself with throwing over another hen-coop, and prayer.’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ said Mrs Abuthnot with energy.

  ‘Alas, it is only too true. The sight of that shark gave me the worst shock of my life and I hope I may never have another as bad.’

  Winter looked up from the embroidery she held in her hands and spoke for the first time:

  ‘Perhaps you had not thought of there being sharks, but you went to the rescue of a man whom you - you had no cause to think well of. That at least was noble.’

  Alex regarded her with a distinctly ironical eye. ‘I’m afraid not. You see I did not know who it was whom I had gone after.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Not until I had reached him; no.’

  Winter stared at him wide-eyed. ‘But - but if you had known, you would not have left him to drown.’

  ‘Oh yes, I would,’ said Alex grimly. ‘The gesture was a lamentable mistake on my part, and one which I deeply regret.’ He came to his feet, and handing over the unravelled skein of silk to Mrs Abuthnot with a bow and a smile, turned away and left them.

  ‘He does not mean a word of it,’ said Mrs Abuthnot comfortably. ‘He is just being modest. So truly heroic!’

  ‘Oh, no, he is not,’ said Winter scornfully, her eyes sparkling with anger. ‘He means every word of it. And he is quite right - he did nothing in the least heroic, because he knew quite well that he himself would not drown and he had not even thought of there being sharks. He did not know who had fallen overboard, and may even have thought it was you or Sophie. If he had known, he would have let that man drown!’

  ‘How can you say such a thing, Winter?’ Sophie’s soft voice quivered with indignation.

  ‘Because it’s true,’ snapped Winter. The reflection that she herself had come close to regarding Captain Randall’s exploit with as much admiration, if not more, as the hero-worshipping Sophie, filled her with fury, and the fact that she had been in a fair way to forgiving and forgetting Captain Randall’s disloyalty to Conway added immeasurably to her anger.

  Conway, she thought, would have sprung to the rescue of a drowning man even if he had known the risks - it would not have occurred to him to stand by and see even an enemy drown. And suddenly, with that conviction, Conway was alive and real again and no longer a thing of pasteboard and straw.

  The remainder of the voyage had been uneventful. They had seen a school of whales off Colombo and passed an East Indiaman under full sail by moonlight, looking like some fabulous thing made of silver. They had braved the surf in cockle-shell boats to land at Madras, and had driven through the town in curious carriages shaped like oblong boxes made from Venetian blinds. And now at last they were almost at the end of their long journey.

  The tide lapped and gurgled against the sides of the stationary ship, and through the open porthole Winter could see an enormous star, low above the the sea and swinging like a diamond on an invisible chain to the slow rocking movement of the anchored ship. One of the housemaids at Ware had told her that if you wished upon a star your wish would come true, and ever since then, on every clear night, Winter had wished on a star. Always the same wish. That the years would pass quickly until the day that Conway would come for her. Now there was no need to wish that wish any longer, and the blazing brilliance of the star that she could see beyond the cabin porthole seemed to point the difference between tonight and all those other nights, and to be a sparkling omen marking the start of a new life and of so much happiness that she would never need to wish upon a star again - unless, perhaps, it were to wish that Conway might never be disappointed in her.

  As she watched, the sky turned to grey and a cock in the galley began to crow. Soon the sun would turn the silt-stained sea to gold, the boatswain’s whistles would shrill and there would be a patter of feet on deck and the rattle of the anchor chain. The last day—!

  Except for the last few necessities, Winter had completed her packing on the previous afternoon, for she could not bear to waste a moment of that wonderful day. Every foot of the way, the tangled thickets of bamboo, the thatch-roofed huts surrounded by groves of tamarind, jackfruit and custard apple, the low brown land, the temples and the wide, mud-coloured Hooghly with its treacherous shifting shoals and unpredictable currents, was wonderful and exciting to the girl who had passed that way as a child almost a dozen weary years ago, held in the arms of Zobeida who had wept as she looked her last on her homeland.

  Every approaching craft, every carriage seen upon either bank, might be one that contained Conway. A horseman riding behind a far belt of trees or a figure carried in a rough palanquin might be he.

  Alex Randall, seeing her run to lean over the deck-rail as a river launch approached the ship, felt again the same half-angry, half-exasperated desire to tell her that she must not look like that: she should not let such glowing expectation show on her face for all to see, for before the day was out she would have seen for herself what the years had done to Mr Commissioner Barton, and she would never wear that look again. Watching that young and vulnerable face, Alex thought entirely dispassionately that it would be a pleasure to choke the life out of Mr Barton.

  The sky was ablaze with sunset by the time the Glamorgan Castle reached the Calcutta anchorage, and boat after boat shot out from the shore bringing relatives and friends of those on board, or coming to fetch the passengers away. Mrs Abuthnot, who had informed Lottie only the day before that any public display of affection was not only intolerable but indelicate, abandoned all reserve and cast herself into the arms of a tubby little gentleman with a cherubic face, silver-white hair and mild blue eyes, who proved to be Colonel Abuthnot, and the reunited family retired to shed happy tears in the privacy of their cabin.

  Winter stood apart from the turmoil of welcome and departure, her eyes anxiously scanning every boat. But none contained a familiar face. She had seen Kishan Prasad leave, loaded with scented garlands of flowers and tinsel that had been brought by the f
riends who had welcomed him; and had watched a boat with two rowers bring an Indian wearing an odd, sandy-coloured uniform out to the ship, and seen Alex Randall go quickly to meet him.

  The man had saluted stiffly as he reached the deck and then his brown face had creased into a grin of pure pleasure, and Winter saw Alex’s hand go out and grip the man’s shoulder, holding it hard, and saw that he was smiling the same smile. For a moment the two men had looked at each other without words, as brothers might look who meet again after a long separation, with affection and relief in each other’s safety. Then Alex’s hand had dropped and they had both laughed and turned away together, talking rapidly.

  The crowded decks emptied and Winter watched anxiously as boat after boat drew away laden with passengers for the shore. At last someone touched her on the arm and she turned quickly. But it was only Captain Randall. There was a look on his face that was dangerously near pity and it stiffened Winter’s slim shoulders and brought her chin up with a jerk. She looked very young, thought Alex, and despite the haughtiness of that lifted chin, very frightened and wary. He said bluntly: ‘He has not been able to come. My orderly has brought letters from Lunjore.’

  Winter took the proffered packet with a hand that was not quite steady. Her fingers closed on it so tightly that the stiff paper crackled and she could feel tears prickling behind her eyelids, but she forced them back. If she let Alex Randall see tears in her eyes she would never forgive herself. Or him. She said: ‘Thank you,’ in a small cold voice, and Alex turned away abruptly and left her.

  Winter caught at the rail to steady herself. She found that she was trembling, and the tears that she would not let Alex see stood in her eyes so that she saw the river and the trees and the houses on the bank through a swimming mist. The disappointment was almost too bitter to be borne. Today was to have been the end of a long journey, but the journey had not ended after all. She looked down at the letter she held clenched in her hand, and after a moment broke the seal.