Her guide led them slantwise up to a second gate, beyond which was a pasture full of cows who stared at them in stolid boredom as they trooped across. The cries from the house were faint and few now, but a strange mutter seemed to be growing in the village. The next gate led into a lane, all arched over with hazels, which her guide wanted to turn along; but Nicky thought they were still dangerously close to the big house and insisted on pushing through the fields behind the straggle of cottages that ran down the main road to the Borough.
More pasture here, and they had to skirt around a marshy piece where the stream that flowed through the White House gardens rose. The mutter from the village was like the roar of surf, and above it floated indistinguishable human shouts. Looking to her right as they slanted down toward the uproar, Nicky saw a slow column of smoke billowing up into the blissful morning. She realized what had happened.
“Run!” she cried. “Run, but keep together!”
If they didn’t reach the road in time, a hundred maddened villagers would be roaring down to the big house to slaughter every living thing there, Sikh or robber. It was no use reaching the road alone—she had to come with all the children, safe. The villagers had seen the smoke from the stables and decided that the robbers had fired the barn where their hostages lay. And it would be the Sikhs’ fault.
The line moved down hill, slowed to the pace of exhausted and ill-fed six-year-olds stumbling through the tussocks.
“You three,” gasped Nicky to the older ones nearest her, “run to the road. Try to stop the village from attacking my friends. Tell them all the children are safe.”
The messengers went down the slope in a happy freewheeling gallop, as if it had been a game for a summer evening. Nicky grabbed the wrists of the two smallest children and half helped, half hauled them over the hummocky turf. Other children dropped their flints and copied her. And here was a path, a narrow channel between the wall of a chapel and the fence of a pub garden, and now they were in the road, gasping, while the three messengers shrank from the roaring tide of the enraged village as it poured down the road toward them, led by little old Maxie waving a carpenter’s hammer. The men were yelling, but the women were silent, and they were more terrible still: marching in their snowy aprons, faces drawn into gray lines with rage and weeping, fingers clenched around the handles of carving knives and cleavers.
Terrified by the sight, Nicky’s army melted to the walls of the road. She stood helpless in the middle, still gripping the fat wrists of the two small children.
The tide of vengeance tried to halt, but the villagers at the back, who could not see what had happened, jostled into the ones who could. The news spread like flame through dry hay. The roaring anger changed and became a great hoarse splendor of cheering and relief. Mother after mother dropped her weapon and ran forward, arms outstretched. They came in a white whirl, like doves homing to the dovecote, and knelt in the road to hug their children.
Nicky ran to Maxie.
“Can you get the men to come and help my friends?” she cried. “They’ve killed half the robbers, but they’re still fighting.”
Maxie looked around at the bellowing crowd and nodded.
“Lift me up, Dave,” he crowed to the stout man beside him.
Dave and another man swung him up to their shoulders as if he’d been a child held high to watch a king come past. He raised his arms like Moses on the mount and waited for the cheering to die.
“Men o’ Felpham,” he crowed. “You know as the Devil’s Children have rescued our childer out of the hands of the robbers. Now they’re fighting them to the death down at White House. Do we go help them?”
A mutter of doubt ran through the crowd.
“We’ve taken the horses,” cried Nicky. “Look, I’ve brought one. And we’ve burned the place where the armor was, and we’ve killed half the robbers. We’ve killed the worst of the horsemen.”
The mutter changed its note, and rose.
“Do we go help them?” crowed Maxie again. “Or do we let it be said that the men o’ Felpham stood and watched while a handful of strangers did their fighting for them?”
The mutter returned to the note that Nicky had first heard, the noise of surf in a gale.
“Okay, Dave,” said Maxie, “you can put me down.”
The women pulled their children aside to let the bellowing army pass. Nicky picked up a fallen cleaver and walked beside Maxie.
“Five of my grandchilder there,” he said. “You go home now, girl. This is no business for a child.”
“I’m coming to make sure you don’t hurt my friends,” she said.
“Shan’t do that. Not now.”
“Well, I’m coming anyway.”
Maxie looked over his shoulder.
“Hey!” he crowed. “You get off that horse, Dave Gracey, and let the girl ride. She’ll be safer up there.”
The stout man slid down, grinning, and whisked Nicky up to the broad and cushiony back. She had ridden ponies on holidays, sometimes, but never a creature as tall as this, never bareback and without reins, though Dave Gracey still held the halter. She seemed a mile in the air, and clutched the coarse mane with her left hand.
But after a minute she found that she wasn’t afraid of the height, because the back was so broad and the horse’s movement, at this pace, so steady, that she might have been riding on a palanquin. She let go of the mane, rested the cruel cleaver across her lap, straightened her back and neck and rode like a queen.
The exultation of victory thrilled through her blood. They had nearly done it now. All through the long night stalk, and the taut waiting, and the short blind blaze of action, she had felt nothing. She had simply thought and acted as the minute demanded. Even fear (and she had been horribly afraid) came from outside, pulsed through her, and was gone. But now she thought, “We have nearly done it.” Glory washed over her like sunrise.
Now she knew why the robber knight had laughed like a lover as he clove at the tarred planks. The same glory was in him; but in him it had gone rancid.
It was a good half mile from the Borough to the White House. The village bellowed its coming all the way.
The besieged robbers must have heard them, realized that flight was the only hope now and made a desperate sortie. For as the village turned into the White House drive they met a dozen of their oppressors. Beyond, on the far side of a little bridge, came the weary Sikhs.
The village halted, faced by these armed and pitiless enemies. Another second and their courage might have oozed away as fast as it had risen; but Nicky kicked as hard as she could at the horse’s sides, swung her cleaver up and shouted “Come on!”
The great beast trundled forward and the roaring rose behind her once again. A robber lunged at her with a short lance, but she saw the stroke coming and bashed the point aside with the flat of her cleaver. Another man fell as the horse simply breasted him over. The second rank of robbers turned to run back over the bridge. But there on the other side, swords ready, waited the grim Sikhs. The robbers hesitated, and the village churned over them.
Nicky was already among her friends. Gopal was there and Uncle Chacha and Kewal and the risaldar, weary as death but smiling welcome amid their beards. She dropped from the horse and ran to drag Maxie out of a ring of shouting and backslapping friends. He came without question.
“This is Mr. Maxie,” she said. “This is Mr. Jagindar Singh.”
The two men shook hands. Blood was still seeping from a crooked slash that ran from Uncle Jagindar’s wrist to his elbow.
“I reckon we owe you a lot, sir,” said Maxie. “More’n we can rightly pay.”
“You will pay us well if we can now be friends,” said Uncle Jagindar.
Chapter 8
FIVE STONES
Kaka and Gurdial and Parsan won the fancy-dress parade at the spring festival. Kaka was the back legs of the elephant, Gurdial was the front legs, and Parsan, aged two, dressed in brilliant silks and jewels, rode in the tiny howdah and was
the princess. In fact the Sikh children, with their unfair advantage of looking slightly fancy-dress anyway, might have won every prize in the parade if the vicar hadn’t been diplomatic enough to give the second prize to Sarah Pritchard, who came as a flaunting gypsy. She was Mr. Tom’s great-niece.
On the other hand the village won the tug-of-war and (to the risaldar’s disgust) the archery; and, of course, all the cake-making contests—there was no prize for chapati. But then Mr. Surbans Singh won the plowing match, cleaving a line so straight behind his big dray horse that you’d have thought he had a cord to steer by. Nicky didn’t win anything, though she bowled and bowled for the pig. Kewal told her that if there’d been a disobedience prize, the dog which she’d found limping through the January snow on the common would have beaten any dog the village could put up. Kewal was wearing his gold turban and had spent all night with his beard in curlers; every girl in the village made eyes at him, and with his squint he had the advantage of being able to ogle two at a time. He strutted as though he’d won the battle against the robbers single-handed. (He had, in fact, been very brave but not—Uncle Chacha once hinted—very skillful, having neglected his sword practice.)
After the fancy dress parade was over and Kaka and Gurdial and Parsan had been given their prize—a white rabbit—the trumpet sounded for the main event of the festival. The trumpet was the one the robbers had used for their signals; before that it must have blown in a pop group; now it was half the village band.
The bowling for the pig stopped, and the women left off chaffering at the stalls and began to summon their children from their squealing chase among the elders’ legs. Everybody trooped away, the young men down to the old cricket pavilion to collect their weapons, and the rest to line the Borough and the short street up to the churchyard. The old lady, Ajeet’s grandmother, waited on her cart at the widest part of the Borough and Maxie stood on a crate beside her. Maxie was mayor now; the village hadn’t fancied being ruled by another Master, so, soon after the battle, they had elected a mayor and councillors. Uncle Jagindar was a councillor.
Away to the right, from the cricket pavilion, the trumpet blew again. This time it was playing not a call but a tune, “The British Grenadiers,” which was the only march the trumpeter could get the whole way through. A clumsy drum rattled in support. The village stood murmuring and craning, waiting for the soldiers to pass.
First marched the two standards. Kewal carried a gold lion embroidered on a black cloth, to symbolize the fact that “Singh” means “lion.” The village had chosen, mysteriously, a sheep. (The vicar had liked that, and had preached a sermon on the text “The lion and the lamb shall lie down together.”) The sheep was white, on a green cloth, and one of Mrs. Sallow’s cousins carried it.
Next came the trumpet and the drum, and behind them the risaldar and the six bowmen from the village. If you knew the risaldar well you could see that beneath his proud bearing he was still sulking about the archery contest. Last of all came the infantry, fifty swords strong. Uncle Jagindar had hammered and tested every sword.
There was no cavalry, because all the village ponies were too busy hauling and plowing to be trained for warfare. The big dray horses which the robbers had brought hauled and plowed too: neither Sikhs nor villagers had thought it right that three men should ride proud while the rest walked.
The soldiers saluted the old lady and Mr. Maxie with their swords as they passed; they all looked as though they knew how to handle their weapons. Mr. Maxie waved an affable hand, as though he were saying good-bye to a visitor from his doorstep, and the old lady put her palms together and bowed with antique grace. The procession wheeled right, up toward the church, and the whole village and all the watching Sikhs crowded behind. Nicky and Ajeet and Kaka and Gurdial trundled the old lady’s cart up the slope.
Mr. Tom’s brilliant notion had solved the puzzling question of the monument. The three dead Sikhs were of course not Christians, and neither Sikh nor villager thought it proper that their monument should be in the churchyard. But two villagers had also died, one first of all and the other by a bitter fluke meeting a robber’s sword in that last rush over the bridge. These two were Christians—at least since May. So five great stones had been found, and a stonemason had been brought over from Bradley to square them up and set them into the churchyard wall (“neither in nor out,” as Mr. Tom had claimed). The mason had then cut a single name deep into each stone.
ARTHUR BARNARD
WAZIR SINGH
MANHOOR SINGH
HARPIT SINGH
DAVID GRACEY
Thousands of daffodils and a few hellebores and primroses stood in vases and jars along the top of the wall and in a thick mass on the ground below it.
The vicar, very nervous and breathy with emotion, preached a short sermon from the old mounting block beside the monument. Despite his donnish accent he managed to say what everybody felt was right, about how the two communities needed each other, both in peace and war. Uncle Jagindar read a brief prayer in Punjabi and then translated it into English, adding that words like “courage” and “love” meant the same thing in any language. Finally the trumpet played “God Save the Queen,” just as if anybody knew what had happened to the Queen since May. Everyone cheered.
“Very English,” whispered Kewal in Nicky’s ear. She trod on his foot, on purpose.
The army dispersed and the weapons were put away, though many of the villagers now copied the Sikhs and wore their swords wherever they went; the men relaxed and chatted while the women got supper ready and the village children taught the Sikh children how a maypole worked and the bigger boys played football. Nicky noticed an odd group around the old lady’s cart, Mr. Maxie and Mr. Tom and Neena and Uncle Jagindar, all talking earnestly. Quite often one of them would glance across to where she sat against the pavilion wall fondling her stray dog’s ears.
It was a lucky night, warmer than usual for April, under a dull sky. Stars would have been pretty but would have meant frost, which no one wanted either for sitting out in or for the sake of the vegetable patches which were sown and showing. But even in that comparative mildness they were glad to sit within feel of the huge bonfires which had been built at the bottom of the recreation ground. The spit-roast mutton was very good, and the home-baked bread much nicer than chapati, Nicky decided.
After supper she didn’t feel like joining in anything, though there was dancing between the bonfires—whole lines or circles of dancers moving in patterns with a prancing motion which overcame the roughnesses of the turf, while Mr. Tom’s lion-headed fiddle sawed out the six-hundred-year-old tunes. Ajeet had attracted a ring of small children around her, a little beyond the circle, and was telling them a story which made some of them tumble about with laughter. Nicky sat and leaned her back against the wheel of the old lady’s cart and longed to be less stupid at Punjabi, so that she could talk to her without a translator. They were somehow the same kind of people, Nicky knew, herself and the old lady—hard, practical, wild, loving. But though Ajeet or Gopal gave her a long lesson every day, so that she could now understand quite a bit of the talk, she couldn’t speak more than the easiest sentences back. She had never been any good at languages, not French, not German, and now not Punjabi.
So she leaned against the wheel and watched the pattern of dancers in the orange light of the bonfires, and the huge oval of faces, and the sudden fountain of curling sparks that erupted when a log collapsed. Neena came out of the dark and sat beside her.
“Are you happy, Nicky?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I ought to be, but I’m not.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“We’ve been talking about you.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
“We think it’s time we tried to get you back to your own family.”
“Please don’t talk about it. Please!”
“No, listen, Nicky. Mr. Maxie’s cousin is a sailor at Do
ver. Mr. Maxie sent a message to him and he heard the answer yesterday. Ever since … since all these changes happened, boats have been going over to France, ferrying people away. Millions of people have gone. And the French have set up offices all along the coast, where they take everybody’s name very carefully. The French are good at that sort of thing. It may take a little while, but in the end they will find your parents for you, and all this will become just like a dream, or a story that Ajeet tells.”
“But why should anyone take me to France? What can I do in exchange?”
“We will pay them.”
“But no one’s got any money, not anymore.”
“The smallest of my mother’s rings would buy a fishing boat ten times over. And she would give every jewel she owns to make you happy, Nicky. I sometimes think she loves you more than any of her own children or grandchildren. It is strange, is it not, how sometimes a soul will speak to a soul across language, across the generations, across every difference of race and birth and breeding.”
Neena spoke some sentences of Punjabi. Nicky knew enough to understand that she was translating what she had just said. Nicky put up her hand and felt the other hand take it, felt the hard, cold knuckles and the harder rings.
“Mr. Maxie’s cousin will come and fetch you next week,” said Neena. “He will see you safely right out to the middle of the Channel, where the big ships wait and the madness ends. Mrs. Sallow insists that she will go with you as far as the sea, so that you are not among strangers.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Nicky. “I daren’t.”
“But why? You have dared and adventured much more terrible things. This should not frighten you.”
“It’s not that kind of fright. It’s … I don’t want to explain.”
Neena spoke quietly in Punjabi, and there was a short silence.
“Nick-ke,” said the old voice above her head.
“Ai?” said Nicky.
The old lady began to speak, her voice dry and quiet, like the sound of a snake rustling across hot rocks in her own far country. This time it was she who spoke in short sentences, so that Neena could translate.
The Changes Trilogy Page 12