Shadow of the Moon

by M. M. Kaye

  ‘Disgraceful!’ puffed Mr Halliwell indignantly. ‘Man’s a menace! a rumour-monger. Taken to nerves and the vapours like some mewling female. He ain’t fit to command troops if he’s started listening to that sort of flap-doodle.’

  ‘Two hundred and thirty-three thousand …!’ It was the ex-Member for Chillbury and Howersford who spoke, and his mellifluous voice had a startled note in it. ‘And how many British did he say? Forty-five thousand odd? It is indeed a sobering thought. You are quite sure that there is no danger to be apprehended? I had intended to pay a brief visit to Delhi and the interior but—’

  ‘I assure you, sir,’ said Mr Halliwell, ‘there is no need for any anxiety. The country is pacified from end to end and basks, if I may say so, in the beneficial sunshine of our benevolent rule. As for the Bengal Army, it is loyal to the core - I am sure that all you gentlemen will agree with me.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ concurred the grey-bearded Brigadier. ‘The finest army in the world! Naturally, when one reflects that they have served us for a century, there are bound to have been a few unpleasant incidents from time to time. But they mean nothing. Mere ripples. The vast mass of the country and the Army are well content. In fact I can safely say they have never been more so. Those who prate of disaffection are cranks and alarmists, but fortunately they are few in number. If you intend to visit Delhi, sir, Colonel Abuthnot here can tell you more about it than I can. His Regiment is stationed there, and I am quite sure that he does not consider them to be on the verge of revolt.’

  ‘Hardly, sir,’ said Colonel Abuthnot with a smile, ‘or I should not be taking my wife and daughters to Delhi.’

  ‘Indeed? That is most reassuring.’ The ex-Member of Parliament appeared relieved. ‘I cannot suppose that you would contemplate putting your wife and daughters in any danger, and if the ladies can proceed in safety, there can be no cause for anxiety. I had intended to venture into Oudh, should time permit, in order that I might be able to gain first-hand information on this newest addition to our territorial possessions. I have been given a letter of introduction to a Mr Coverley Jackson—’

  ‘What is that about Coverley Jackson?’ inquired a new voice, and the group turned as one to see their host advancing upon them. ‘Are you contemplating a visit to Lucknow, Mr Leger-Green?’

  ‘Only if time permits, your Excellency. I have an introduction to Mr Coverley Jackson from a mutual friend.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Lord Canning. ‘Competent fellow Jackson - if only he were not so quarrelsome.’

  ‘You’re looking fagged, Charles,’ remarked Lord Carlyon. ‘India don’t appear to agree with you. Too many social functions and too much heat.’

  ‘And too much work,’ said the Governor-General with a smile. ‘You should try it, Arthur. It would at least have the charm of novelty.’

  ‘Now that is too bad of you, Charles,’ protested his Lordship indolently. ‘I work like a demned nigger.’

  ‘You surprise me. At what, may I ask?’

  ‘Keeping boredom at bay. And here I am flogging round the globe in proof of it.’

  ‘Stay here awhile and try some real work instead,’ advised Lord Canning. ‘We can use even someone as ornamentally useless as yourself.’

  ‘Then you must be devilish hard up for hands, Charles.’

  ‘We are; or we shall be if this Persian business blows up into anything. The annexation of Oudh has stretched our resources to the limit. But this is no time for such dull talk. You gentlemen are neglecting your duty; you should be dancing.’

  ‘We leave that to our juniors, your Excellency,’ said Mr Halliwell. ‘Every lady is at least three-deep in would-be partners already, and such old fogeys as ourselves would receive short shrift from them.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Halliwell,’ said the Brigadier, straightening his befrogged tunic. ‘I intend to dance the lancers with my wife - if I can persuade her from the whist table.’

  ‘Bravo, General!’ approved Lord Canning. ‘I trust that the rest of you intend to follow such an intrepid lead. A word with you, Arthur—’ The Governor-General took Lord Carlyon’s arm and moved away in the direction of the ballroom.

  ‘What’s on your Excellency’s mind?’ inquired Carlyon, his lazy-lidded eyes unexpectedly observant. ‘You were not by any chance serious just now?’

  ‘When I suggested that I could use your services? Certainly.’

  ‘My dear Charles! In what capacity? To dance with the ladies who attend your crushes? It is the most that I am capable of - and then only providing they are pretty. I cannot dance with a plain woman. I lose all sense of rhythm and am instantly abroad.’

  ‘You underrate yourself, Arthur. I know you to be a superlative horseman and a first-class shot.’

  The younger man stopped suddenly and turned to regard his host narrowly. He said slowly: ‘What exactly do you mean by that? Do you too think as that Colonel in there - that there is going to be trouble?’

  ‘What Colonel? Was someone prophesying trouble?’

  ‘Fallon, I believe the name was. Elderly little man with a face the colour of a brick wall. Tell me, Charles, is it one of the rules of the Indian Army that a man must be at least a grandfather before he is considered fit for command? Damme if I’ve ever seen such a gaggle of grey-beards. Your colonels are all tottering on the brink of gout and the grave, while your generals would appear to have both feet already in it. And they told me that this was a young man’s country!’

  ‘So it is - for those who make the most of their opportunities.’

  ‘Not if they stay in the Army, I collect! I am no military strategist, but isn’t it time that the Company overhauled its policy of promoting by seniority? I gather that no one can become a senior officer in the Bengal Army until they are senile and consequently useless. No wonder some of the less moribund go around croaking of impending disaster.’

  ‘Was Fallon croaking of impending disaster?’

  ‘Like a raven,’ said Carlyon lightly. ‘But he appeared to be in the minority. What are your own views? Do you too anticipate the deluge?’

  ‘No, of course not. Nothing wrong with the country. Some people enjoy croaking of doom. The effects of this prophecy, I suppose. It is quite astonishing how superstitious even the most level-headed can become.’

  ‘What prophecy?’ inquired Carlyon, interested.

  ‘Oh, it’s an old tale now. It cropped up after Plassey. The Company’s Raj - rule - was to last for a hundred years after the battle that established it. And Plassey was fought in 1757.’

  ‘So the hundred years are up next year,’ commented Carlyon. ‘Very interesting. But surely you cannot take this seriously?’

  ‘Naturally not. I wish you will not be ridiculous, Arthur.’

  ‘Then what is worrying you?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. It is just that … Well, I would like you to extend your visit if that is possible. Will you do that?’

  ‘Why?’

  The Governor-General looked down upon the crowded ballroom and spoke in an undertone that was barely audible above the chatter of voices and the gay music of the fiddles: ‘It would be of use to me if you were to decide to go on an extended tour of this country - in an entirely private capacity, of course, as a casual sightseer only - and give me your impressions. I find that too many people tell the Governor-General only what they think will please the Governor-General. It is this question of Oudh. The ex-King and his swarm of hangers-on are here in Calcutta, and they deafen me with their complaints as to the behaviour of our people in Lucknow. I have sent the strongest representations to the Commissioner, Coverley Jackson, but his replies have been evasive.’

  ‘Sack him,’ recommended Carlyon, bored.

  ‘I can hardly do so without hurting his feelings,’ said Lord Canning unhappily. ‘The charges are quite possibly without foundation, and are certain, at worst, to be grossly exaggerated. But they are doing our reputation a great deal of harm and providing fuel for the malcontents. If only I could have
effected the Commissioner’s removal without the necessity of direct dismissal … I had hoped—’

  He paused, frowning, and Carlyon threw him a glance of friendly contempt. He was aware of Canning’s tendency to avoid harsh measures, and of the conscientiousness that would not allow him to give an arbitrary decision on any matter that he had not thoroughly and personally sifted to the bottom. Carlyon, less patient, had little sympathy with such an attitude, and no intention of prolonging his stay in the East. He intended to reach England by the New Year, and he would not have considered visiting India in the first place had it not been that his skill in managing his amours had temporarily deserted him, and a situation had arisen which had made it seem advisable to pay a protracted visit to foreign parts. An invitation from the Cannings to visit them in Calcutta had arrived at this opportune moment and been accepted. But he considered that he had been abroad for quite long enough, and the prospect of proceeding to Lucknow in order to test the accuracy of charges brought against the British administration of the newly acquired province by its deposed King, did not appeal to him. His languid gaze rested without interest on the dancers, and his attention wandered.

  ‘You could not of course proceed direct from here,’ said Lord Canning, ‘but were you to go first to Delhi and return via Lucknow, it would give the appearance of a sightseeing tour, and—’

  He became aware that Carlyon had ceased to lounge and was gripping the balustrade with both hands and watching someone in the ballroom below with every appearance of lively interest.

  ‘By Jove!’ said Lord Carlyon under his breath, ‘it is the ugly duckling!’ He turned to his host with an unwonted gleam of animation in his bored eyes. ‘Forgive me, Charles. I see an acquaintance of mine below. Perhaps we may continue this conversation some other time.’ He turned to descend the flower-decked staircase and was lost to view.

  Lord Canning sighed a little tiredly. It was true that he wished for an accurate and unbiased report on the state of affairs in Lucknow, without the necessity of any official inquiry that might force him to remove the Commissioner from office. But quite apart from that he was conscious of a strong reluctance to see any able-bodied Englishman leave the country. He was not a particularly imaginative man and he had no patience with those who prated of disaster. But there were times when the enormous extent of this strange subcontinent that had passed into his charge oppressed him with the thought of its size and its dark, teeming millions. So vast - and held by so few …

  He looked down upon the shifting colour of the ballroom with its glittering uniforms and swirling crinolines, and as he listened to the bright web of music and laughter that wove an almost tangible pattern above it, he caught sight of Carlyon’s tall figure shouldering its way through the press of dowagers and spectators at the ballroom’s edge, and saw him accost a slim, dark-haired girl in a white ball-dress who appeared to be surrounded by young officers.

  The Governor-General turned and retreated to his study to wrestle with the contents of a dispatch box, leaving his wife to do the honours. He had emerged in the grey dawn, when the lamps and the candles were burning low and carriages drawing away laden with yawning men, sleepy dowagers and excited laughing girls, to find Carlyon escorting a stout matron in a crimson opera mantle across the hall and into a closed carriage. The lady’s face was unfamiliar to him and she did not look to be at all in Carlyon’s style - both her dress and her coiffure, even to the Governor-General’s disinterested eye, being far from in the first rank of fashion.

  Lord Carlyon, however, handed her into the carriage with a display of affability that was most unusual in him, bowed over her hand and expressed his intention of calling upon her at the earliest opportunity, and stood back to allow a tubby gentleman in the uniform of a Colonel of Native Infantry, presumably the lady’s husband, to enter the carriage. There were half a dozen young officers grouped upon the steps, and they dispersed as the carriage drove off.

  Lord Carlyon turned and made his way slowly back across the hall between the crowd of gorgeously uniformed servants and stopped at the unexpected sight of his host.

  ‘Ah, Charles - I imagined that you had very sensibly decided to retire to bed.’

  ‘Who was that?’ inquired Canning without much curiosity.

  ‘No one of interest. A Mrs Abuthnot.’ Lord Carlyon glanced down at the wilting flower in his buttonhole, removed it and dropped it onto the polished marble floor. ‘By the way, Charles,’ he said softly, ‘you will be interested to hear that I have decided to take your advice and extend my stay in India. I shall visit Delhi, and I may even return by way of Oudh.’

  15

  ‘Can we take our own road from here?’ asked Niaz* Mohammed.

  Alex turned away from the window of the sparsely furnished dâk-bungalow room and dropped the split-cane curtain back into place.

  ‘Is there need?’

  ‘Great need,’ said Niaz, busy with the straps of a dusty valise. ‘It was not advisable to speak while there were many to overhear, but now—’

  ‘Here also there are ears,’ said Alex with a jerk of his head towards the verandah outside, where the shadow of a loitering servant lay long upon the sun-warmed stone.

  Alex and his orderly had left Calcutta by train. The new railway, one of Lord Dalhousie’s most admired strides towards the Westernization of his Eastern Empire, now reached as far as Raniganj - a distance of over a hundred and forty miles north of Calcutta. But from this point the remainder of the journey must be accomplished by road, and Alex and Niaz had left the train, hot, dusty and coated with grit and cinders, and having slept the night at Raniganj in company with Colonel Moulson and a varied assortment of troops and travellers moving north, had proceeded for several days’ journey towards Benares by dâk-ghari - four-wheeled, cab-like vehicles drawn by two horses.

  The roads as a result of the monsoon were unspeakably bad, the half-starved ponies made poor time, and Alex’s travelling companion, a morose Major on his way to rejoin his Regiment at Benares, did little or nothing towards improving the discomforts of the journey. The space between the seats had been boarded over and bedding spread on top so that the two men could lie down, and the Major spent the larger part of the day lying supine with his eyes closed, arousing himself only for the purpose of uttering some complaint. Niaz rode on the box with the driver, while the Major’s servants followed in an ekka, a rickety-looking two-wheeled vehicle drawn by a single horse. The horses were changed at every stage, and in addition to frequent stops for repairs to bridles, harness or the ghari itself, the passengers had twice been forced to descend and help man-handle the vehicle back onto the road as a result of a wheel leaving the track.

  On the fourth day the entire ghari overturned down the side of an embankment. Its passengers, including the driver, escaped unhurt, and owing to the fact that the shafts and traces had snapped as though they had been made of so much matchwood and string, the two starveling and evil-tempered horses had not only been unharmed but had bolted across the plain. The dâk- ghari itself presented a sorry appearance, and one look was sufficient to inform even the meanest intelligence that its long career had come to an inglorious close.

  The driver had wasted an unconscionable time in rending his garments and calling down a variety of picturesque curses upon the heads of the absent horses, but eventually, urged forcibly by Niaz, started off in half-hearted pursuit. The Major had high-handedly commandeered the ekka, and leaving its lawful occupants to follow on foot, had ordered its driver to proceed to the nearest dâk-bungalow (happily only a matter of two miles ahead) with himself, his bearer and Alex on board. Niaz had elected to remain with the baggage and had arrived at the dâk-bungalow some two and a half hours later, having transferred himself and his master’s luggage to a passing bullock cart.

  There were several other dâk-gharis at the bungalow, where their passengers were partaking of such refreshment as the khansamah could provide, and the morose Major lost no time in arranging for one of them to take
him up. Fresh horses were brought from the stables, the passengers embarked once more, and after a prolonged and invigorating struggle the reluctant steeds started off at a headlong gallop and the gharis disappeared in a cloud of dust. Alex and Niaz were alone in the dâk-bungalow and quiet descended upon the scene.

  It would be some little time before a new conveyance could be procured, said Niaz, and since the sun was already low in the sky, they would have to spend the night there. He would prepare a room, and he suggested that it might be possible to procure riding horses locally for very little cost, so that they might dispense with the services of a dâk-ghari.

  ‘When there is work to do it is better to travel alone,’ said Niaz, his dark face expressionless, ‘and I have a friend in the village. A man to whom I was able to do some small service. One does not know when a friend may be of use, so I remained at his house for a night on my way south. I think he will find horses for us.’

  Alex nodded and turned to enter the room at the far end of the verandah in which his bedding and valise had been placed. He had had few opportunities for private conversation with Niaz since he had landed, for the hotel in Calcutta had been overcrowded and he had been compelled to share his bedroom with another officer.

  Niaz was a Punjabi Mussulman whose home was north of Karnal. Born in the same year as Alex Randall, he came of a family of well-to-do landowners of some consequence whose daughters would seem to have married far from the family acres, since he appeared to possess blood relations in half the provinces of India. He had served in Alex’s Regiment and fought at his side at Moodkee and later at Ferozeshah. Alex’s horse had been hamstrung at Moodkee by a wounded Sikh in the charge that silenced the guns of the Khalsa, and Niaz had risen in his stirrups and by some miracle of horsemanship had gripped Alex and dragged him clear as the horse fell. A moment later he had slipped to the ground and Alex was in his saddle with Niaz holding the stirrup-leather and fighting beside him in the swaying maddened mêlée, yelling joyfully as he had yelled in the charge: ‘Shabash, baiyan! Dauro! Dauro!’ (Well done, brothers! Ride! Ride!)