Ramsey leaned forward to smooth a hand over her hair and down her cheek. He cupped her chin in his hand and raised it. Her eyes still held their defiant look.
“How old were you when you were married to Pratap Mahindra?”
“Seven years and my husband was aged twelve. When I reached thirteen I became a woman and my husband claimed me. I left my home and went to him. One year later, he fell ill and died. He was strong and handsome and he did not beat me and I loved him.”
“Did you run away?” He knew her own family would not have taken her back.
“I went, empty-handed, with nothing but the few glass and silver bangles on my wrists and ankles, gold earrings and a small ruby nose stud. There was a great woman in Nekshahr, one of the most famous dancers in all India. She had danced often for the Nawab, at his palace. She gave me shelter and taught me to dance. When I was sixteen she sent me to a friend of hers in Lucknow. For six years I danced in the houses of others. A year ago I formed my own troupe. Two of my girls were born to tribes in which the good-looking daughters are trained for this work from generation to generation. One is a Salb, the other an Adbalki. The third one was an unwanted daughter, sold to such a tribe, the Kalavant.”
He made no comment. She expected none. She was not asking for pity or even sympathy, either for them or for herself. Whether Hindu or Muslim, all Indians were resigned to however Fate dealt with them. Every dancer was a courtesan but not every courtesan was a dancer. There was no shame in being the one, and being the other was a distinction. The two girls who had been born to the trade were, by definition, outcastes. The one who had been sold into it was also casteless, whatever caste she may have been born in. Shakuntala had lost her caste by her own actions.
“I look forward to seeing you dance.”
“You will remember us?”
“You will be my only friend in Nekshahr.”
“Your friend?”
“More, perhaps,” he said softly.
“You have no British friends there?”
“I know nobody in the whole of Zafarala. Except Shakuntala the dancer.” Whom he knew was none of her business; least of all his boyhood friend Ghulam Kasim, pretender to the throne of Zafarala.
She stretched out her hand to him and he took it in his own and stroked it. It was the first time he had touched her, except for that gentling of her face a moment ago. The mere contact, the intimacy that had grown quickly between them and was, as yet, only a matter of innuendo, aroused him. Her glance travelled down from his face and she began to laugh. He could feel her arm shaking. She looked up at him again, eyes alight with fun, with amusement and surely, he thought, with shared excitement.
*
The rain caught them on the open road in mid-morning. The girls drew the heavy red curtains of their parda ratha, the drivers adjusted gunny sacks over their heads and shoulders, cracked their whips and urged the bullocks on. Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh wrapped lengths of tarpaulin about them. Ramsey unrolled the cape he carried behind his saddle and slung it about his shoulders. The fat drops sizzled down with stinging force, bouncing off the roadway, splashing into puddles, spattering mud up the legs of animals and men and coating the wheels.
The road sloped gently downward and some way ahead Ramsey could see that it met another, which crossed it, and that trees lined both sides of the road they were following, just beyond the junction.
He turned and shouted “We will shelter there, under the trees,” and dug his heels into Sikander to get him out of the rain as quickly as possible.
Nearing the trees he saw that other travellers had already found their shelter, on both sides of the highway. There were a few bullock carts, a couple of horse-drawn vehicles and a score or so of people. The men were watching him approach and as he guided his horse under the trees and came to a halt they salaamed and made Namaste.
One of them came forward, a podgy, clean-shaven, middle-aged Hindu who, by his dress, was a small merchant or perhaps a money-lender.
“Salaam, Bara Sahib. Are those Your Honour’s vehicles coming down the hill?”
“Yes.”
“You have come far?”
Ramsey told him the name of the riverside town he had left eight days earlier.
“Has the bara sahib encountered other travellers on the way and heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Of dacoity, Sahib. We have heard many tales of armed robbery in the last few days. That is why we have joined together, for we all come from different places.”
“I have heard nothing of this.”
“Yesterday we passed through a village which the dacoits had attacked the night before, killing many and stealing every last piece in the place. Two days earlier I met some people who had been attacked on the road and fled to save their lives, leaving all their goods behind.”
“How far have you come?”
“I have been six days on my journey already and these others have come from various places. All those carts are travelling with Your Honour’s possessions?”
“All but the two parda ratha.”
“We have been debating whether it is wise to continue, even though together we are perhaps able to defend ourselves against dacoits. May I ask how far Your Honour is going?”
“To Nekshahr.”
“That is where I am bound, Huzur, and some of the others also. The rest are all going to different places along the same road. Would Your Honour permit us to travel with you and bask in the shadow of your protection?”
“Accompany us by all means, if you wish. Who are you?”
“I am a corn-merchant, Huzur.” Ramsey knew his kind: he was almost certainly the money-lender in his village as well. That was nothing much to hold against him: without someone to finance them when crops were bad or cattle died, the peasants would starve. And this fellow seemed to have some force of character about him; evidently the others acknowledged him as leader of their chance-assembled convoy.
“And what is your name, baniya?”
“Sukhdeo Lal, Your Honour.”
Some of the other men had gathered around and there were exclamations of gratitude to Ramsey. They called him their protector; a timely shield against misfortune sent by the gods or by Allah, according to their beliefs; a light upon the darkness of their fear.
It was Sukhdeo Lal who presently interrupted.
“Huzur, those two men on foot: they look like Punjabis. Are they with you?”
“They go wherever I go. One is a Punjabi, but don’t call Sher Mahommed Khan anything but a Pathan unless you want your throat slit.”
He was amused by the disconcerted expression not only on the fat baniya’s face but also on all the other observers’ as they watched the two tall, brawny figures come swinging down the hill towards them, each with a heavy staff in his hand and, as they knew, somewhere under the rough canvas cloak a knife that could eviscerate an enemy with the flick of a wrist.
Ramsey said “What better protection could you want? It will be a sorry day for any dacoits who attack us.”
*
The shadows lengthened and still the Thag argued among themselves. They had taken the head of the column when the rain stopped and men and vehicles moved on. The two pony-traps, one of them driven by Sukhdeo Lal, were in front. The previous day they had reconnoitred for a suitable place for their first assault and it lay a few miles beyond the cross-roads where they had been lurking to pick up their first victims. Sukhdeo Lal had told Ramsey that he knew a suitable place for the night’s stop, from previous journeys, and Ramsey had agreed to it.
Sukhdeo Lal himself and some of the others took it as a good omen that instead of having to wait three or four days, picking up travellers as they went until they had collected enough to make a killing worthwhile, they had in one stroke come upon this rich convoy. Even Sukhdeo Lal, however, had to agree with the many who declared that it could be too dangerous to tackle a party which numbered three men like the English ex-officer and his t
wo former soldiers: as Sher Mahommed Khan had lost no time in identifying them.
“We outnumber them,” Sukhdeo Lal was saying as they covered the last mile. “We have dealt with as many before and, this time, we can leave the four women until we have despatched all the men.” It took no more than half a minute to strangle with the practised quick jerk of the silk square around the victim’s neck and the instant twist of the knuckles that drew it so quickly and so tightly across the windpipe that even the strongest of men was unconscious before his hands could tear it away. If the girls were in their parda wagons with the curtains closed, they would not even know what had happened to the men before they in turn were leaped upon.
“Besides,” Sukhdeo Lal added, “we may wish to make use of them before we use the cloths. They are beautiful, all of them, with breasts like melons. It could be dangerous, brothers, but if we take care it will be no different from other times. Think: if we fear them, a week will be wasted; for those of us who profess to be journeying as far as Nekshahr will have to go all the way there with them. You others will have to wait for us to rejoin you before we can do our first killings. Moreover, my brothers, just think of the wealth contained in the Englishman’s carts; and the jewels the nach girls undoubtedly have in their boxes.”
Finally he declared “I am your leader and I say Kali will be displeased if we neglect this opportunity. We have the chance to steal a greater prize tonight than we have made in the last four or five years put together. We will do it.”
The bhuteari, the scouts, who had gone out the day before to find a suitable place had fixed on a typical one: a grove of trees a hundred yards or more off the road, an hour’s walk from the nearest habitation and surrounded by scrubland and jungle.
Before they reached it Ramsey had gone off in search of game and was waiting for them with a dead buck at his feet.
Sukhdeo Lal climbed down from his trap, officious and ingratiating. “If Your Honour agrees, the carts should be kept close together in a circle so that none can be taken by surprise if dacoits creep upon us. Also, all of us in my party will take it in turns to keep watch, four at a time, all night. Perhaps Your Honour’s men will do the same?”
“That has already been decided.”
“Forgive my presumption, Huzur.” And, the baniya was thinking, it will give me particular pleasure to flick my own silk around that thick white neck of yours and squeeze the life out of it.
The two separate groups set about making the cooking fires and preparing food. In the gloaming, the lughai slipped away with their pickaxes to dig a shallow grave, long and narrow, in the rain-softened soil.
Ramsey reclined gratefully in his chair, freshly bathed, with his first glass of brandy and water in his hand. The homely sunset tang of smouldering wood and cowpats rose from the cooking fires. Presently the pungency of spices, the good smell of baking chapati, reached his nostrils. He had been thoughtful all afternoon since overhearing a few mumbled exchanges between their newly-met companions which baffled him. He had called his two orderlies to him.
“Mingle with these people and tell me if you understand what they say among themselves. It does not sound like a dialect to me; certainly none we have heard along this road. More like some kind of slang.”
They had both come back to tell him that the cryptic phrases they had heard exchanged meant nothing to them.
Ramsey could not get it out of his mind. It discomfited him. And there was not only the slang, there was something in the atmosphere this evening which had never been present before when they halted for the night. It recalled to him the mysterious aura of tension in the cantonment on that dreadful night all those weeks ago.
He called “Sher Mahommed Khan, Karim Baksh, come here.”
Karim Baksh came into the tent. “Sher Mahommed Khan is not here, Huzur. I have not seen him for half an hour.”
“See if he is talking to the girls.”
“He is not there, Sahib. I saw him walk off in the other direction.”
“You two and I will stay awake all night. I with a brace of pistols, you each with a gun. I don’t trust baniya and the like to stand sentry if there really are dacoits at large.”
“As well expect old women to do sentry duty.”
“There is something else I want to say to you when that inquisitive Pathan returns. What is he nosing around for? There are no women, except our dancers.”
“He says the hairs on his neck are bristling like a wolf s, Sahib. It is not women he has on his mind, for once. I do not know what makes him restless.”
“Pour me some brandy and water, then go and see if you can find him.”
They returned in twenty minutes, Sher Mahommed Khan wearing the expression that portended some well embroidered tale. Ramsey was not going to indulge him this time.
“Has Karim Baksh passed on my orders?”
“Yes, Sahib, and I have been reconnoitring. Truly, I have a special instinct for...”
“Get to the point, brother. You can elaborate when you tell the story to your grandchildren.”
Sher Mahommed Khan looked injured and Karim Baksh grinned.
“I reconnoitred the area, Sahib.” Sher Mahommed Khan managed to sound prim, rebuking and righteous while looking, as usual, about as prim as a timber wolf and righteous as a brigand. “I counted six of those sons of pigs we allowed to travel with us today sneaking off carrying pickaxes. I followed one. They all went to the same place and they are digging a long trench.”
*
The Thag had fed one of the cooking fires with enough wood for it to burn brightly all evening while everyone sat around it in convivial talk and entertainment. Sukhdeo Lal had put himself next to Ramsey. His fellow travellers were passing round jugs of palm toddy and Ramsey noticed that although they drank sparingly they pressed the alcohol on his drivers. Even the Muslims among the Thag sipped the toddy. Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh regarded them with contempt. They did not criticise Rumgee Sahib for drinking brandy and wine, for it was not against his religion and was the custom of his people; but, for good Mussalmen to let alcohol pass their lips was an abomination and these low creatures travelling with the fat baniya were poor apologies as members of the Faith.
Two of the young Muslims were slim, smooth-faced professional dancers and they were in company with two Hindus of the same effeminate and perverted sort, one a drummer the other a lute-player. All four of them had painted their eyes with kohl. The two dancers had rouge on their cheeks and lips and flashed winning smiles at Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh, who growled in their throats and spat over their shoulders: not from moral condemnation: intimacy between males was commonplace among Pathans and among all other Muslim and Hindu races; but neither man had any taste for such practice and held these prancing catamites in the deepest loathing and scorn.
The lute-player’s black reed pipe shrilled up and down the scale, making Ramsey’s scalp crawl with a sensation of indecency. The drum throbbed suggestively, the drummer sang, leering around at the other men. The dancers gyrated and contorted themselves obscenely.
Sukhdeo Lal took the mouthpiece of his huqqa from his lips and chuckled.
Ramsey, looking around the assembly to avoid having to see those corybantic pederasts, noticed that the strangers had moved so that there was one of them next to each of his drivers, the two men who drove the girls’ carts and his two orderlies.
For some moments he had a queasy sensation that something was amiss although he could not define it. The memory of the night of the mutiny suddenly thrust itself forward. He had the same kind of premonition as when he had recalled having heard the artillery going on parade that night.
He called in Pashtu “Sher Mahommed Khan, prepare for action. Tell Karim Baksh.”
The Pathan repeated the warning to Karim Baksh in Punjabi, which the others would not understand. Startled faces turned to stare at the three of them. The half-drunken drivers stirred and gazed blearily around. The musicians played and sang more loudly, t
he dancers leaped and whirled with greater frenzy.
Sukhdeo Lal shouted the signal: “More tobacco for my huqqa!”
The stranglers’ hands flashed down to the protruding corners of their scarves. The hands jerked up and the black silk squares made sliding, rustling noises and stirred the air. It sounded like a flock of bats, their wings flapping vigorously.
Ramsey saw a blurred movement out of the corner of his right eye as he leaped up, dragging the silk that was already around his neck and hauling Sukhdeo Lal to his feet. He felt the silk tighten in the instant that he smashed the barrel of the heavy pistol in his right hand down onto the baniya’s temple. He heard the crunch of bone as the man fell dead.
He saw Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh leap to their feet in unison with himself, each dragging a square yard of black silk and the strangler who gripped it. He saw their knives whip out and plunge into their assailants’ bellies, ripping. He heard the dying Thag scream and loosen their grip, totter and fall.
He saw four men rushing towards the two parda ratha and fired his pistols in turn, killing a man with each shot as he ran after them. One man was half-through the curtains of Shakuntala’s wagon when Ramsey caught him and smashed his head in with a blow of a pistol-butt. He raced in long strides to the other ratha, from which terrified screams were coming. In the faint light of a candle lantern he saw that one of the girls was being strangled. Again his pistol butt rose and fell and the Thag released her.
There was pandemonium around the fire. Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh had each killed two more Thag with their knives and knocked two into the fire, where their clothes caught alight and whence they ran screaming. The dancers and musicians had also run away with several of the other Thag. Some of the Thag were struggling around his two orderlies, whose knives were busy. Every few seconds a man reeled from the fight with a gash in his throat or body, to die. Ramsey ran to his tent to grab his sword and flail at the Thag who were still piling onto his two men.
The survivors broke and ran. Ramsey took a last lunge at one and skewered him.
A Good Soldier Page 15