She paused before pressing him to own to a further interest, though he did not guess that she supposed him to be working to some scheme. ‘Captain Hervey, you will now entreat my father to accept the protection of the British, will you not?’
Her percipience did her great credit, and Hervey’s admiration was the more. There was no question but that he must answer rightly. ‘I shall. I would consider it more than prudent in any circumstances, but since the nizam’s intentions are at best uncertain, and likewise the army’s loyalty, I believe it to be the only possible course.’
The raj kumari looked closely at him, narrowing her eyes in a manner that conjured a startling menace. ‘And do you suppose that Chintal would ever then be free of interference by the British?’
With what passion did she serve her father’s interests! In that instant, Hervey was disavowed of any notion but that the raj kumari was quite unlike any woman he had known.
The rajah’s utter dejection seemed, at one moment the following day, as if it might wholly pull him down. Selden was even fearful of some derangement, and all its unthinkable consequences. But the rajah would see no physician, native or otherwise. And then, towards the evening, he had seemed to emerge from his despondency, ordering that the state processional, held four times each year, and which occasion the following day no official of the court had dared to enquire of, should continue. He told Selden it would be a sign to his subjects that they might have confidence in the permanence of Chintal, and of the rajah himself. He would process with all his elephants, as was the custom, to the great oxbow of the Godavari, where the ashes of the dead had been ceremonially scattered for generations, and there he would have his sepoys drawn up. He would remind them of their destiny and then absolve them from the penalty which Hervey had imposed. Throughout evening and most of the night, therefore, the palace was all activity, with constant curses and laments: Aré bap-ré, bap-ré!
As Hervey walked towards the menagerie in the cool of the late evening, old Seejavi’s mahout greeted him solemnly in his fractured Urdu, and Hervey returned his salutations with a smile. ‘How go things in the hathi-khana?’ he asked, knowing full well the mahout would be flattered that Wellesley-sahib’s captain wished to hear of things in the elephant stables.
‘By the favour of the Presence, all is well. Tonight is old Seejavi’s festival, and tomorrow he will go with the rajah to the river, if he wills — but with no man on his back.’
‘And is he very old, mahout sahib?’
The wizened little man swelled with pride at both the thought of Seejavi’s age and the captain’s honouring him so. ‘He is the oldest elephant in all of India — compeller of worlds, mover of mountains. He has been with the rajah since the Great Fear. Men say he carried Cornwallis-sahib. Gopi Nath has just repainted his head, and three chirags burn on his skull-top; will not the Presence come and see him?’
Of course he would come. And soon they were in the hathi-khana, the most peaceful quarters of the palace that night — although elsewhere, a dozen mahouts and many more gholams sweated to prepare the howdahs and trappings for the morning.
‘See his tusks, mounted with gold: the rajah had that done when Seejavi charged through the Maratha hordes at the time of the Fear and enabled him to escape to the British. It was twenty years ago today, and the rajah always gives silver to the hathi-khana and decorates Seejavi, the amir-i-filan — the prince of elephants — lest he turn on us and kill his mahout. Seven mahouts he has killed in my memory, sahib. See the garland of roses the rajah sent him this morning: he will only wear them if his temper is good.’
Hervey contemplated Seejavi for many minutes. The old elephant stood swaying from side to side as if cogitating some equal mystery, the oil lamps atop his head flickering and dancing with frosty blue flames.
‘Seejavi will soon begin to speak, sahib.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, sahib. We never know what he will say, but he tells of battles and sieges, of suttees and sacrifices, and of men he has killed.’
‘Mahout sahib—’
‘Prince-born, it is true, I tell you. He will speak to Shisha Nag, his favourite he-elephant. He will tell him secrets — how he threw the vile Sindhia’s spy from his back and trampled him. And how, when he served the peshwa awhile, and they fought the nizam’s army, they captured the guns worked by some French. And how they made prize of the French camp, among them a French woman whom the rao claimed as his share. He carried her off in a howdah on Seejavi’s back that night, though she wept bitterly. The rao put his arm around her and she bit him till he bled, so that he swore again, but vowed she was a fit wife for a reiving Maratha. Seejavi took them across the Nerbudda, in full spate from the mango showers. And two sons she bore the rao! And Shisha Nag will listen respectfully — enviously, for the rajah does not use his elephants for war any longer.’
Shisha Nag stood a few paces behind Seejavi, swaying to and fro also, as if waiting for them to leave so that he might hear the amir-i-filan’s stories. Hervey smiled to himself: why should such a beast as this, old and wise, not be able to speak of these things?
‘Yes, Prince-born,’ sighed the mahout, ‘Shisha Nag has much to learn from him. And tomorrow Seejavi shall have nine full-size cakes for hazree, spread with best molasses. Tomorrow will be a grand tamasha — the very finest of parties, sahib.’
At eight next morning, the rajah emerged from his quarters into the great courtyard. There, in sunlight so bright that even the gold thread in his purple kurta glinted, he mounted a white Turkoman and, at the head of the palace troop, began the descent of the droog to where the procession had assembled on the maidan — a procession which, if lacking some of the order and symmetry of a parade on the Horse Guards, in its sheer colour and vitality surpassed anything Hervey had seen, or could ever have imagined.
He watched from the walls of the palace. The rajah had said nothing to him since the heartfelt greeting on his return from Jhansikote, nor had he sent any word, and although this might have occasioned some injury, Hervey confided that it was but a most conscious effort at self-reliance on the rajah’s part. Again, he found himself filled with admiration for the rajah’s attachment to duty, difficult for him — painful, even — though he knew it must be.
The palace troop — the lancers of the guard — wore purple also, thirty proud sowars on bays whose coats shone with the effort of many hours’ brushing. Two half-rissalahs — four hundred lancers in all — were drawn up as advance and rear detachments, and six huge war-elephants, their tusks capped by gold sheaths, richly caparisoned in silk shabraques — purple for the rajah’s, red for the others — stood with infinite patience. Ornate mounting steps awaited the dignitaries who would travel in the cupolaed howdahs. Awnings, extending like those which shaded the bazaar merchants as they sat in front of their shops, gave just sufficient relief from the sun’s coming strength to the bare-legged mahouts. All the officials of the court were gathered in their most extravagant finery, and all made namaste as the rajah appeared. A fanfare of huge trumpets echoed the occasion beyond the palace walls, and the elephants, though their fighting days were long past, raised their trunks in salute. Out of a palanquin draped in silks and studded with semi-precious stones stepped the raj kumari. Hervey’s telescope moved at once to her, for her purple saree set off everything about her which might make a man admire a woman. She bowed to her father, took his hand as he led her to the mounting steps, and most gracefully did they both ascend to the howdah. The rajah stood acknowledging the acclamation of the courtyard, and then signalled to Captain Steuben atop the magnificently accoutred Shisha Nag for the assemblage to move off (Steuben was the only European whom Hervey could see in the procession, for not even Selden was there). He watched them leave the maidan and went then to the stables, for although he had business enough to occupy him with a pen all day, the urge to follow the procession was too great. He wanted to see this singular cavalcade at its fullest extent, and the Godavari durbar where its design would
be fulfilled.
Johnson, in the way that only he seemed able, had anticipated him, and Jessye and one of the rajah’s country-breds stood saddled in their stalls. In five more minutes they were leaving the palace by a side gate, and heading for the low-lying hills which overlooked the river and the road to the oxbow, so that they might observe discreetly, respectfully.
The great basin of the upper Godavari was nothing like as green as at other times, except the forested slopes of the northern side, an abutment of the Eastern Ghats, whose dark canopy extended as far as the eye could see. On the flood plain itself there were comparatively few trees, and at this time of year the black cotton soil and rocky outcrops were bare of signs of cultivation. During the rains the tableland would become grass country once more, a vast grazing ground and fodder store for the thousands of placid beasts which served the people of Chintalpore. Between the city and the oxbow the river was a wide, sedate stream — as it was, indeed, for much of its length. The only obstruction between here and the sea 150 miles to the east was caused by shallowing across two or three sections of rocky bed where the river traversed the strike of the adjoining hills, barring the way to navigation when the water was low. On the eastern borders of Chintal, where the domains of the nizam, the Company and the Rajah of Nagpore successively adjoined those of Chintal, there were points of great beauty. Here the Godavari became enclosed between the Bison range (so called because of occasional visits by that stocky game) and the hills of Rumpa. The steeply shelving cliffs and crowded forests of bamboo, teak, tamarind and fig might have been those that overlooked the Lorelei, except that no castle or other work of human hand was to be seen.
In an hour or so they were nearing the oxbow, almost a full mile behind the cavalcade, on the higher ground to the south. But such was the brightness of the sun, and the clearness of the air, that the procession could easily be observed in all its detail without even a telescope. The saffron lance pennants first drew the eye to the escort, whose sowars still sat tall in the saddle. Then to the bullock carts and the camels which carried the means for the rajah’s feast, and then to the gaggle of ryots who followed, as always, hopeful of some benediction of the rajah, or better still some material benevolence — and some blessing by Shiva or Kali or the spirits of the Godavari. In truth, they came because they had always come, for if they did not, then perhaps there might be no monsoon, no harvest. Such was the way with Hindoo gods.
But it was the state elephants that truly commanded Hervey’s attention. At this distance their massiveness, their substance, their belittling of every living thing, was at its plainest. The howdahs added half their height again, and their golds, silvers, crimsons and vermilions stood in sharpest contrast with the baked colours of the land. No greater distinction between the highest prince and the meanest hind could there be than before him now, the rajah elevated beyond all reach in his jewelled and canopied throne, and the ryot behind, covered in the dust of his lord’s retinue, legs bowed, back bent — closer to the earth than to the belly of the noble creature which carried his rajah and gave a face to God. At that moment Hervey knew in his vitals the eternal draw of this land.
Carefully he worked himself nearer to the oxbow, not wanting to be seen, for it seemed (for all its panoply) so private an occasion. He might have got closer still, but at a furlong from the rear of the great press of ryots, behind the ranks of sepoys, he halted shouldersdown in a nullah and took out his telescope.
‘What d’ye see, Captain ’Ervey sir?’
He swept left to right along the whole line of the durbar — perhaps a quarter of a mile of tight-pressed souls, all silent. ‘There’s a sadhu haranguing them. I can’t hear what he says but I think they’re swearing the oath.’ He allowed himself a faint smile of satisfaction: Locke’s way had so nearly prevailed. He had come close to accepting Locke’s counsel indeed, for the instant that muskets, powder and ball were placed in the hands of the sepoys they would be given the means of insurrection they had formerly lacked. But Chintal, of all places, could not be held subservient by mere force of arms. There must be a voluntary compliance in its subjects, both civil and military. The rajah knew it too. And that was why the rajah now had to meet the test four-square, knowing that if Hervey and he had judged things wrong his sowars might save his person, and that of the raj kumari, but his dominion would be lost.
Rousing cheers broke from the ranks of the resworn sepoys. The rajah descended from his state elephant, mounted the white Turkoman and rode along their front rank acknowledging the loyal greetings — testing their fidelity, even — by his very closeness. He rode back to the centre of the line, stood high in the stirrups and made his little speech of obligation and satisfaction. When he absolved them of the year’s service without pay there was another full-throated roar of devotion, and he walked his charger directly towards them, the ranks opening to let him pass, the sepoys making low namaste. And as the great tamasha began — with its spit-roasts and rice, its breads and its spices — the rajah rode from the parade with a stature that even Hervey, through his telescope, could see was enhanced. An escort of but a half-dozen lancers rode with him, south and east towards the low-lying hills where earlier Hervey and Johnson had taken their ease as the durbar assembled.
He lowered the telescope… and then raised it quickly again. It was the sudden surge near the state elephants. Like the wind across a field of corn. Shisha Nag was it not? Throwing up his head, lashing with his trunk, raising a great dust. Hervey could not make out what disturbed him. All he could see was Seejavi standing close by, swaying gently, this way and then that. He rubbed his eye clear of moisture and put the telescope to it again. And he saw the body of a man being carried, as if it were a half-filled palliasse, from where Shisha Nag had raised such a dust. He wondered which unfortunate mahout or sepoy had fallen victim to the young male’s bile — or even to old Seejavi’s wiles.
* * *
A little trail of dust marked the rajah’s progress. Hervey did not even have to broach the crest of the obliging nullah to keep station with him. Where the ground first began to rise, a mile or so from the oxbow, the dust settled and he edged a little up the nullah’s banks to see where the rajah and his escort were halted. He could see them quite clearly, almost two full furlongs away, by an ancient pagoda in a secluded mango grove. The rajah waited as the lancers beat about the ground (for leopard were not unknown in these parts) and then, as his escort retired to the other side of the little hill which hid the pagoda from sight of the river, he dismounted and entered the sacred building. Hervey could see it all quite clearly from his hollow in the ground. He was about to lower his telescope, for he had no wish to spy on the rajah during his devotions, when he noticed, a hundred yards beyond the grove, under a banyan tree, a bullock cart. And then, after a short while, the rajah emerging from the pagoda and walking towards it. A figure emerged from the shade of the tree and made namaste — a shrivelled little man in a sunhat. Hervey turned his telescope back to the cart: two of the thinnest-looking oxen, cream-coloured, yoked side by side, stood patiently. How many oxen, carts and shrivelled little men there were in all of India he could not begin to imagine, but he knew he had seen these ones before.
That afternoon
Three pariah kites glided high above the palace with not a beat of any wing in the five minutes Hervey observed their ascent. They described a lazy but precise circle over the royal gardens, as if disdaining the city beyond, and without any apparent interest in prey on the ground. Perhaps the birds knew that now, in the heat of the day, though still no greater in this month than that of an English summer, few warm-blooded creatures left the shade. At length he walked to the stables, hoping to find Selden there.
‘Hervey, come and take a look at this mare. Have you seen a foaling before?’
‘Not since Jessye herself,’ he replied.
‘Well, you might this evening. She’s waxed up, but she’s not sweating yet, so she’ll drop it after dark is my bet, as most do.’
/> The mare, a light-chestnut Arab, was standing calmly on a deep bed of straw, her syce keeping watch anxiously inside the foaling box. ‘Very well then, Bittu,’ said Selden to him in his native Telugu as he left. ‘Send for me at once when her breathing becomes laboured.’ And then, turning to Hervey: ‘Come — tea and words, I think.’
Hervey agreed.
In the cool seclusion of Selden’s apartments Hervey spoke his thoughts freely. He must leave Chintal as soon as possible — within the week, he hoped. The Jhansikote business was something he ought not by rights to have intervened in. ‘Have you yet located the papers for the jagirs?’
Selden frowned. ‘Hervey, it is a trickier business than you suppose. I don’t have right of access to such documents. I must choose my time.’
Every day he remained here, Hervey protested, he prejudiced his chances of being received by the nizam — which was the duke’s foremost commission.
‘Yes, I understand full well,’ sighed Selden; ‘and I am conscious — acutely conscious — of your having gone to Jhansikote on my promise.’
Hervey would have said some words of mitigation (for he suspected he could never have stood aside, having accepted the rajah’s hospitality), except that to do so might have lessened Selden’s resolve to find the documents. ‘Then you will try to bring matters to a conclusion before the end of the week?’
Selden nodded.
Hervey poured himself some tea and sat by the window.
‘By the by,’ said Selden, sitting in a chair draped with a tigerskin, ‘you have heard of the elephant going must at the durbar this morning.’
Hervey, gazing out intently at the pariah kites still circling, could truthfully say he had not, for he had seen it at a distance, and no-one had spoken of it since his return.
‘Extraordinary business: it tore a man from its howdah. The fellow’s back would have broken as it hit the ground, but the great beast trampled him for good measure. He was brought here post-haste in a doolie — dead as mutton.’
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