When he had left, I rang for a cool drink and a map of the country. With commendable promptness I received a pitcher of some sweet, mango-flavoured drink (with no ice) and a crisply folded map of India, which I spread out onto the floor. I sipped and studied and passed the afternoon without too much dwelling on the possibility of snipers’ cross-hairs following my husband’s back, but I will admit that my heart rose when I heard his key enter the lock.
“Thirty years,” were his words of greeting. “Thirty-two years since I was here, during which time the city has gone from Moghul backwater to capital city, and still the same shopkeepers cling to their corners.”
“You had success,” I noted.
“Indeed.”
“And yet your hands bear no parcels.”
“Certainly not. To walk out the door of this particular hotel in native garb would be noteworthy. Better to slip away as ourselves, and drop those identities behind us in the bazaar.”
“You found a bolt-hole?”
“One might call it that,” he prevaricated, and refused to tell me more. Which meant, I was sure, that the place in which we would transform ourselves would be filthy beyond belief.
“When shall we set off?”
“The cook tells me that the night watchman comes in just before midnight, and invariably visits the kitchen for a few minutes upon arrival. An ideal time to make our departure through the back.”
I rose briskly and walked out of the room.
“Russell, where are you going?”
“Holmes, I intend to bath, long and deep. Knowing you, it will be my last opportunity for some days.”
It was, as it turned out, an optimistic judgement.
We dined downstairs, Holmes on roast meat that was billed as beef and I on a dish largely rice, with bits of dried fish. We lingered over the meal, and even allowed our waiter to serve us with apple tart, which proved delicious once it had been dug free from the thick clots of Mrs Bird’s Custard. Coffee and a brandy for Holmes, and we retired up the stairs as if to our beds.
Instead, we prepared for our departure from India’s European community. Between the contents of my luggage that had survived our voyage and a judicious plundering of Holmes’ possessions, I put together a costume that would pass for an Englishman’s in the dark. My hair, as always, was a problem in disguise, and topees were simply Not Worn after sunset; in recognition of this Holmes had brought back with him from the bazaar a cloth cap not too unlike those worn in England by lower-class labourers and upper-class bloods.
We settled to our studies, planning on a couple of hours’ work before our midnight departure. But just past ten-thirty, a time when the floors vibrated with the motion of our neighbours and the hum of guests going past in the corridor was at a peak, a shudder of alarm ran through the building, a shout and a pounding on doors, one after another, working its way rapidly towards us.
We were on our feet in an instant, Holmes hurling objects into his half-packed travel case, me thrusting Nesbit’s papers into an inner pocket and stuffing my bound hair up under the cloth cap. When he saw that I was ready, he tucked the box of magician’s equipment under his arm and cracked open the heavy door, and then finally the cries of an Indian voice came clear:
“Fire! Oah, sahibs must leave in a hurry, we have a fire! No, memsahib, there is no time to gather your items, please oh please to hurry, memsahib.” More voices came, the lilting pleas of accented servants and the sharp tones of alarmed guests. Holmes and I looked at each other.
“Do you smell smoke?” he asked me.
I moved to the doorway and breathed in the air. “Maybe—yes, I’m afraid I do.”
I stepped out into the hallway, causing a frightened servant to dodge around me and urge the sahibs to “go down please to the lobby right quick” before he continued on to the next room. But Holmes laid his hand on my elbow, and instead of joining the excited guests scurrying towards the central stairs, we ducked against the traffic in the direction of the servants’ stairs. And—clearly Holmes had made a fairly thorough reconnaissance earlier in the day—once within the stairwell, we turned up instead of down.
With many twists and turns through the servants’ passages, we eventually came out at the side entrance of the hotel, where we stepped over the hastily abandoned bags of some late arrival and trotted down the dim alley, past the guest stables and garage until we came out on the next major thoroughfare. We slowed to a stroll among the night traffic, its pedestrians as yet unaware of the nearby alarms, and after a few minutes hailed a rickshaw. The puller did not comment on Holmes’ destination, which proved to be a brightly lit palace of the senses such as one found in any city of size. It catered to Europeans, although I glimpsed a pair of brown faces in the party of men going through the door, and the music that rolled out with the opening of the doors seemed a peculiar amalgam of West and East. The tune rendered by the weird and wailing native instruments was that of a popular song I remembered my father crooning, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage,” although I doubted that he would recognise it without help.
I was just as glad, however, that our path did not take us into the place, but around it. Holmes had clearly laid out this escape, and walked without hesitation down the side street and through a gateway into a yard lit only by a feeble oil lamp. He opened a door, taking my hand to guide me inside, and shut it behind him. I waited in the blackness as his bag hit the ground and his fingers sorted through the contents of his pocket before coming out with a rattling match-box. The box rasped open and with a scrape, light flared. He stepped across to where a handful of fresh candles lay on a tea chest, set the match to one, and dribbled a puddle of wax onto the chest to hold it upright.
We were in what I would have called a cellar, had we not entered it from street level. It was a dank and rustling space about fifteen feet square, with neither windows nor stairs, although the door appeared stout enough. Two walls were heaped with anonymous crates and barrels, on top of which lay a number of string-wrapped, dust-free parcels. The fruit of Holmes’ shopping expedition, I had no doubt.
He wedged a chip of brick under the edge of the door to discourage intruders, and took out his folding knife to slice through the twine of one parcel, tossing its contents in my direction. Most of the garments landed on the dirt floor—thus, I supposed, adding to the verisimilitude of my appearance. From another parcel he took a bottle about five inches in height, containing a thick, dark liquid. This he did not toss, but placed with a scrap of soft cloth on the top of one of the barrels. I removed most of my upper garments, uncorked the bottle, and set about turning myself into a Eurasian.
Without a mirror or adequate light, the walnut-based skin dye was a somewhat haphazard affair, and would need attention the next morning in order to pass close inspection. But for now, by night and heavily clothed, our faces and hands would give the necessary impression. When the dyestuff had worked its way into our pores, Holmes prised the top from one of the barrels, and we washed our skin in the water it contained.
Baggy salwaar trousers of coarse white cotton, knee-length kameez and padded waistcoats over, floppy turbans wrapping our heads and woollen shawls around our shoulders: We would disappear into a crowd. My once-handsome shoes went into the bag Holmes had found to replace the dignified leather case, and I pulled on a pair of toe-cutting native sandals. We looked more like a pair of enthusiastic guests at a costume party than we did two residents of the great sub-continent, but it would do for the moment. Holmes blew out the candle, and we slipped away into the city.
Chapter Nine
For two days, we camped in a tiny room in the back of a spice- seller’s in a small bazaar to the south of Delhi. The warring fragrances were a mixed blessing, becoming at times so powerful as to make one dizzy, but even when sealed up for the night they succeeded in overriding the less appealing odours of our surroundings.
I should say, rather, that I camped there, for Holmes spent the entire first day scavenging through the city for what we shou
ld need; on the second day, he abandoned the shack well before dawn, leaving me with a jug of a particularly disgusting and considerably more permanent skin dye. He was away until the afternoon, and returned to find me black of hair and brown of skin, to say nothing of bored to tears. He rapped on the sheet of metal that was the door, and I removed the prop to let him in.
I had to admit, Holmes dressed down better than I did. Apart from being far too tall, he was every inch a native labourer, and even his height he could disguise by rearranging his spine to drop a full six inches. He set a frayed flour sack onto the dirt floor and dropped to his heels by my side, pulling a dripping leaf-wrapped parcel from his breast and laying a slab of fried puri on top. I eagerly peeled back the leaf and mashed the rice and lentils into manageable little balls, a technique I had perfected in Palestine.
“Did you get everything you needed?” I asked around a mouthful.
Holmes chuckled. “Nesbit nearly rode me down. It would appear that beggars are not welcome along the British rides, and he sits a high-strung horse. But yes, his sources are better than my own, and even if the wrong person hears of his purchases, little will be thought of it—the man is forever acquiring odd objects for his own purposes.”
Most of what Holmes required for the next stage in our campaign he had found in the bazaars, but it would appear that revolvers were not generally available on the open market, and to ingratiate himself into the underworld of Delhi in pursuit of firearms would have taken time. So he had set off that morning with the intention of asking Nesbit for one, and had clearly returned successful. I swallowed the last of the rice, scrubbed the inside of the banana leaf with the stub of bread, and pulled the flour sack over to see what he had found.
I raised my eyebrow at the revolver. It was a pretty thing—almost ridiculously pretty, with mother-of-pearl inlay on the grip and a curlicue of flowers up the barrel. Was this Nesbit’s idea of a lady’s gun, or his idea of a joke? Remembering the quiet amusement in his eyes, I thought it might be both.
“He assures me it is more authoritative than it appears,” Holmes said, answering my dubious look. “And it takes .450 bullets, which are readily available. I should think it all right.”
I balanced it in my hand, feeling its weight—it was indeed more substantial than it looked. When I cracked it to look at the chambers, I found its mechanism smooth, the surfaces well cared for, so I shrugged and laid it by my side: I have no objection to decoration, if it does not interfere with function.
Further in the sack I uncovered a change of raiment—and, more important, a change in identity. This was the garb of a Moslem, instead of the Hindu clothes I wore now, subtly different to English eyes but a clear statement to natives. The itinerant trader in northern India is more often a Mussalman than a Hindu, and that identity possessed the singular advantage that I was already able to recite all the important prayers and a good portion of the Koran in near-flawless Arabic. As Moslems moving through a mixed countryside, we would be both apart and identifiable, an ideal compromise. Best of all, Holmes had included a more satisfactory pair of native boots of some soft, thick leather. I pulled them on and stretched my toes in pleasure. I wouldn’t have put it past my husband and partner to indulge his occasionally twisted sense of humour by presenting me with an all-over chador in which to stumble the roads, but it seemed I was to be allowed my oft-assumed identity as a young male, younger brother to the identity Holmes was now assuming, although his was unrelieved black, for some reason, and he wore a Moslem cap instead of a turban like mine.
As I bound my hair tightly to my head and prepared to wrap the ten yards of light cloth over it, I mused aloud, “How long do you suppose it will be before a woman in these parts of the world won’t have to disguise herself as a man to be allowed some degree of freedom?”
“I can’t see the Pankhursts making much head-way in this country,” Holmes said absently.
“No, you’re right. Perhaps by the time this generation’s grandchildren are grown, freedom will have grown as well.”
“I shouldn’t hold my breath, Russell. Here, you’ll need to change the shape of that puggaree.”
My hands had automatically shaped the thing as if I were moving among Bedu Arabs, but Holmes tweaked it from my head and unrolled it with a snap of his wrist before demonstrating on himself. He went through the motions twice, then handed the cloth back to me and watched as I attempted to copy his motions. His had looked as if he’d worn the garment his entire life, while mine felt as if a faint breeze would send it trailing to the dust, but I told myself that the sensation would pass, and tried to move naturally while I put my new belongings into some kind of order.
“You’ll be pleased to know we have a donkey awaiting us, Russell,” Holmes said cheerfully.
“Oh Lord, not again!”
“It was mules last time.”
“And they were bad enough.”
“Better than carrying everything ourselves.”
“You can be in charge of the beast.”
“That would be most inappropriate,” he said, and curse it, he was right. If I was to be the younger partner on the road—apprentice, servant, son, what have you—then the four-legged member of our troupe would have to be my responsibility. As well as the cooking pot. Cursing under my breath, I thrust my spare garments into the cloth bag and tied my turban once again. This time it felt more secure, which improved my temper somewhat. It was never easy, partnering a man with as much experience as Holmes had—I truly detest the sensation of incompetence.
We spent the night hours practising with the equipment Holmes had conjured out of the bazaar. A set of linking rings, larger relatives of the linked silver bracelets he had bought in Aden, appeared welded in place, awaiting only the magician’s touch before the metal miraculously gave way and allowed the rings to part. A long knife that collapsed into itself at the press of a button; a light frame with a pneumatic pump to lift me in levitation; a small laboratory of lethal chemicals whose reactions would give clouds or sparks or other useful effects. And, when we were ready for it, torches wrapped for flaming, for the ever-impressive juggling of fire.
In the hour before dawn, when only the chowkidars were awake at their posts, we shouldered our cloth bags and in silence left the spice-seller’s shop. The air was still fresh, without the dust raised by a quarter of a million tramping feet, the stars still dimly visible before fifty thousand cook-fires threw their pall over the heavens. Holmes made his way as one who was intimate with the place, ducking past godowns and crossing over deserted boulevards, until the smell of livestock rose up around us and we entered a sort of livestock market, horses in one area, large pale bullocks in the other. Magnificently oblivious of the dung heaps, Holmes strode forward to a shed with a tight-shut door. He banged the side of his fist against the shed’s side, but answer came there none. He drew back his hand to hammer again, when a voice piped up from behind us, speaking Hindi.
“If you are wanting the horse-seller Ram Bachadur, he has gone away to see his mother.”
It was a child, a small person of perhaps nine or ten in Hindu dress, perched atop the low stable wall eating peanuts. Even in the half-light of early dawn it was clear that there was something curious about him, some slightly Mongolian angle to his features, so that one expected him to be slow, his natural development retarded by nature. It took but one brief exchange to begin to question the assumption.
“Do you know where he has gone?” Holmes asked, his arm still raised.
“But of course I know; how else would I have agreed to await your coming?” the boy retorted, the scorn in his voice perfectly modulated to place us a step below him. He spat a shell on the ground by way of punctuation.
Holmes lowered his hand, his head tipped to one side as he, too, re-evaluated the urchin. “Are we to take delivery of the donkey and cart from you, Young Prince?”
The boy slid down from the wall and sauntered around towards the pens. “Not the same animal you had agreed upon
, oah no,” he answered, the last two words an English interjection before returning to the vernacular. “That creature was good only for feeding the vultures, and moreover had the trick of breaking its hobbles on the first or second night out and trotting home to its stable. I succeeded in loosing its rope during the night and exchanging it for its sister, who is an ‘altogether more satisfactory beast.’ ” Again, the final phrase was in ornately accented English, which might have been disquieting except that I had the clear idea that it was merely his way of demonstrating what a man of the world he was.
We followed our unlikely guide past some stinking pens that were full to bursting with horseflesh, to one that was deserted but for one lone donkey, dozing in a corner. The boy climbed up on the gate and gave a little chirrup sound with his teeth, and the creature’s ears flapped, its head coming up and all four feet planting themselves on the ground. It then hesitated, seeing three of us, before sidling around to greet the boy, who reached out and scratched its skull; even in the dim light, I clearly saw the cloud of scurf and dust the motion raised. However, I could also see that the animal appeared well fed and alert.
“And the cart?” Holmes asked.
The boy swung his legs over the gate and dropped into the pen, splashing through the half-liquid and entirely noxious ground to the far corner of the pen, where he stuck his toes into invisible niches and clambered over the wall like a monkey. A minute later he reappeared around the outside of the pen, heaving at a miniature cart that contained a child-sized armload of hay. He stopped in front of us, let the traces drop, and gestured proudly at the light little vehicle. It had probably started life as a cart for the entertainment of small English children, and although its paint was long gone and the high sides had seen rough use, the solid craftsmanship held, and the repairs to its two big wheels and leather straps were neat. The boy stood looking up at Holmes, taking no notice of the muck to his knees; I wondered again about his mental acuity.
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