by M. M. Kaye
‘Surely if her husband were alive he would send word?’ said the women of the Gulab Mahal. ‘It must be that he is dead.’
That thought was often clear on their faces and in their kind, troubled eyes, and one day it had been too clear to be borne, and Winter had answered it as though it had been spoken aloud:
‘No! It is not true. He is not dead. He will come for me some day. I have only to wait …’
And she had snatched up her son and carried him up to Alex’s roof-top although the sun had not yet set and the heat shimmered on the hot stonework, and had strained her eyes in the direction of Lunjore as though her love and longing could reach beyond the horizon and pierce the distance and the dust-clouds and heat-haze that hid it from her sight.
The withered leaves of the trees below her rattled drily under the fingers of a little hot wind that blew through the garden. A wind that must have blown over Lunjore. ‘Some day,’ thought Winter. ‘One day …’
They were words that she had been saying all her life. She had said them as a child at Ware. ‘Some day I shall go back to the Gulab Mahal—’ And she had come back. Surely some day Alex would come back too.
The sun dipped down towards the horizon and bathed the shattered city in beauty, hiding its blackened, gaping scars, and Winter remembered what Hodson had said to her - Hodson whose star, as the astrologer in Amritsar had prophesied so many years ago, ‘would arise and burn bright among much blood’, and who had died in the battle for the city - ‘I may see him before you do.’ Had he too spoken prophetically ? Had he indeed met Alex?
Quite suddenly she could bear it no longer, and she turned and ran desperately, as she had run before, to the refuge of the painted room, sobbing and shuddering.
The reflected glow of the sunset filled it with a warm rosy light, touching the trees and the birds and the flowers into the same enchanted life that lamplight could give them, and the leaves and the petals welcomed her and the birds and the beasts nodded to her and Firishta watched her with a bright, friendly, reassuring eye.
She pushed the bed to one side and sank down on the matting with the child in her arms, and leaned her head against the cool carved plaster, pressing her cheek against the comforting curve of Firishta’s round green head. Her eyes closed and gradually the helpless trembling of her body lessened as little by little the fear ebbed away from her.
The baby went to sleep in her lap and the glow faded from the room, taking the gay brightness from it and leaving it as cool and as softly colourful as an opal.
Outside the windows the birds were settling down to rest with noisy chatterings and cawings and a flutter of wings among the orange trees, and beyond the far wall of the garden the dome of the little whitewashed mosque with its iron emblem of the crescent moon cut a lilac pattern against the evening sky.
The hum of the city rose up about the Gulab Mahal, washing around it; and through it and above it Winter could hear all the familiar, friendly sounds of the house. The distant chatter of shrill feminine voices, children laughing, a baby crying, the aged gateman clearing his throat and coughing asthmatically, a clatter of cooking-pots and the creak of the well-wheel. The sounds mingled and mixed with the no less dear and familiar scents of water sprinkled on parched ground, of the spicy smell of Eastern cooking and the smoke of dung-fires, the scent of warm dust and sun-soaked stone.
The sounds and the scents seemed to weave a web about the painted room, isolating it in safety, and Winter drew a long slow sigh and felt the last of the shuddering fear leave her.
‘Some day,’ she said, whispering the words against Firishta’s green head. ‘One day—’
There were footsteps and a murmur of voices in the passage beyond the doorway, and then someone lifted the heavy curtain that hung before it, and she opened her eyes and looked up. And it was Alex.
GLOSSARY
Angrezi British; English
Angrezi-log British people
Ayah child’s nurse
Bairagi Hindu holy man
Bakri goat
Begum Mohammedan lady
Belait England
Beshak assuredly
Bhil grave dug by the Thugs for their victims
Bhoosa straw
Bibi-gurh women’s house
Bourka one-piece head-to-heels cloak, with small square of coarse net to see through
Budmarsh rascal; bad man
Bund irrigation bank
Bunnia shopkeeper
Burra-lat-Sahib Great-lord-Sahib (Governor-General)
Butchas ‘young ones’ (children)
Charpoy Indian bedstead (usually string or webbing)
Chatti large earthenware water-pot
Chik sunblind made of split cane
Chirag small earthenware oil-lamp, used in festivals
Chowkidar night-watchman
Chuddah sheet or shawl
Chunam a fine, polished plaster
Chunna roasted gram (a form of grain)
Chuppatti thin flat cake of unleavened bread
Chupprassi peon
Dacoits robbers
Daffadar sergeant (cavalry)
Dâk mail; post
Dâk-bungalow posting-house; rest-house
Dâk-ghari horse-drawn vehicle carrying mail
Dazi tailor
Deputtah head-scarf
Dhobi washer of clothes; laundryman
Dhooli litter; palanquin
Durbar public audience; levee
Ekka light two-wheeled trap
Fakir religious mendicant
Feringhi foreigner
Ghari any horse-drawn vehicle
Ghee clarified butter
Gopi milkmaid
Gurra earthenware water-pot
Havildar sergeant (infantry)
Hookah water-pipe for smoking tobacco
Howdah seat carried on back of elephant
Huzoor Your Honour
Ilaqa district
Jaghirdar landowner
Jehad holy war
Jemadar junior Indian officer promoted from the ranks (cavalry or infantry)
Jezail long-barrelled musket
Jheel shallow, marshy lake
Juggra trouble; quarrel
Jung-i-lat Sahib Commander-in-Chief
Kala hirren blackbuck
Khansamah cook
Khidmatgar waiter at table
Khussee short-handled axe, carried by Thugs
Koss two miles
Koti house
Kotwal headman
Kutcha makeshift
Lance naik lance corporal
Lathi long, heavy staff, usually made from bamboo
Lotah small brass water-pot
Lughais Thugs who were responsible for the burial of the dead
Machan small platform built in a tree
Mahout elephant driver
Maidan parade-ground
Manji boatman
Maro! Strike! or Kill!
Masala spice
Maulvi title of a Mohammedan priest
Mem-log white women
Mullah Mohammedan priest
Munshi teacher, writer
Nani grandmother (diminutive)
Nauker-log servants (literally, ‘servant-people’) Nautch-girl dancing-girl
Nullah ravine or dry water-course
Padishah ruler
Pan betel-nut rolled in a bayleaf and chewed
Parao camping-site
Piara darling
Puggari turban
Pulton infantry regiment
Punkah length of matting or heavy material pulled by a rope to make a breeze
Purdah seclusion of women (literally, ‘curtain’)
Pushtu the language of the Pathans
Resai quilt
Rissala cavalry (regiment)
Ruth domed purdah cart, drawn by bullocks
Sadhu Hindu holy man
Sahib-log white people
Saht-bai literally, ‘seven brothers’: small brown birds whic
h go about in groups, usually of seven
Sepoy infantry soldier
Serai caravan hostel
Shabash! Bravo!
Shadi wedding; marriage
Shahin peregrine falcon
Shamianah large tent; marquee
Shikar hunting and shooting
Shikari hunter, finder of game
Sirdar Indian officer of high rank
Sowar cavalry trooper
Subadar chief Indian officer of company of sepoys
Syce groom
Taklief trouble
Talukdar large landholder
Terai a tract of land running along the foot of the Himalayas north of the Ganges
Tulwar curved sword
Zemindar farmer
Zenana woman’s quarter
Also by M. M. Kaye
THE FAR PAVILIONS
Trade Wind
About the Author
M.M. Kaye (1908-2004) was born in India and spent much of her childhood and adult life there. She became world famous with the publication of her monumental bestseller, The Far Pavilions. She is also the author of the bestselling Trade Wind and Shadow of the Moon. She lived in England. You can sign up for author updates here.
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Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Family Tree
BOOK ONE: THE SHADOW BEFORE
1
2
3
4
5
6
BOOK TWO: KISHAN PRASAD
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
BOOK THREE: CONWAY
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
BOOK FOUR: MOONRISE
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
BOOK FIVE: THE HIRREN MINAR
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
BOOK SIX: THE GULAB MAHAL
47
48
49
50
51
GLOSSARY
Also by M. M. Kaye
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 1956, 1979 by M.M. Kaye
All rights reserved. For information, write:
St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension. 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kaye, Mary Margaret, 1911-
Shadow of the moon.
1. India—History—Sepoy Rebellion, 1857–1858—Fiction. I. Title.
PZ4.K233Sh 1979 [PR6061.A945] 823’.9’14 79-5033
eISBN: 978-1-250-09076-8