I heard commotion. Whether over me or a bad dice call, who knew?
I ducked back. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Yes. Sure. Show me,” I said, turning my mouth down in skepticism. What could it hurt? Let them search for me a few more minutes, I thought mutinously.
Preeta showed pointed teeth and crouched, prying at a small hatch through which the pipes ran. “Quickly then, my friend. You put me in danger,” she accused. “We leave from here. I do often.” She preened then as if licking herself and, with wiry strength, grabbed my arm, dragging me down. “Jaldi karo! Hurry. Someone might come!”
I caught a whiff of mildew as she yanked the hatch loose. It was old wood, with the hole for the fat pipe running through it and leaving a space of about eighteen inches to wiggle past.
I looked aghast. Preeta must have been driven mad by the seraglio; she bent and wriggled through the small opening.
If they find me missing…?
Dear God.
Do I have choice?
No.
With a glance back, as if seeing the palace grounds for the last time, I felt my heart flutter like a bird with its cage left open, then hunkered and stuck my head in the hole.
Looking back, Preeta showed white teeth again. “If the snake sleeps, the small birds may hop freely about to see their lovers.” I shivered in the cool damp and glared. “What game do you play? Lovers? I have no lover.” I scooted back.
“Wait!” Preeta’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Don’t! Yes, very dangerous for me too!”
“It’s too small—I cannot possibly…”
Preeta’s head disappeared, followed by her rump, and then all I saw were the soles of her feet. A hand reached back, accompanied with a muffled command: “Come, chut marike!”
Crawling on my expensive fragile silk sari, I wriggled through, feeling a momentary pang. The passage opened into a sort of domed tunnel of rough concrete and bricks. Preeta could stand almost full height. I needed to crouch.
“Close the door!” Preeta hissed back.
I did.
Adequate for Preeta’s slim build, for me the tunnel, webbed and musty, three feet wide and perhaps two feet or so higher, half-filled with both clay and copper pipes, was a squeeze. I had to either straddle the water ducts or skirt the wall with my head at a hangman’s angle.
“It is how we do it. We who have lovers.” The tunnel muffled Preeta’s silky laughter. “We who dare!”
“Of course, this many lonely, loveless females would find a way,” I muttered, vindicated.
My spirits rose.
“But where does it go? Jaldi karo?” I tried.
“Outside, of course. To paradise!” That silken laugh again, packed with innuendo.
Picking up courage like a discarded garment, I grinned. “Show me!”
I was a—what had Preeta called me? A chut marike? I supposed I was an idiot. Better an idiot than dead or wishing to be… I chuckled as I thought of the maharajah’s rage.
From her ornate lighter, Preeta fired a fat candle, obviously from the kitchens. Let the devil answer.
“Preeta? But where, outside?”
“I told you! Our lovers. Hopeful I am…” She spoke in English, but irritably.
“I have no lover!” I grumbled.
“Never fear, Sa-ree! I mean this leads to our lovers. You, I do not know.”
I scowled at Preeta’s back, a bobbling shadow, one used to this crawlway, while I banged my head on a ceiling snarled with cocoons of dried insects spanning unknown decades.
Dead palmetto beetles scrunched underfoot, and glossy live ones as large as my palm scuttled overhead. I did not flinch. Somewhere, beyond memory, I had seen far worse. Wondering why the many webs, if this tunnel was so trafficked, I risked calling, “How far?”
“I myself go as far as the tiger cages, Sa-ree. The tigers’ yowling masks our pleasure—my lover’s and mine. Now come!” she scolded. “I do not waste time idly, you see!”
A slow dripping formed a strange soup beneath me. Detritus coated my hems. My gold slippers became sodden and useless. Gradually, though, the tunnel dried.
Passing openings dwindling in the dark like wormholes, I wondered who was the first desperate soul to travel to freedom this way, feeling a pang when rough walls caught my exquisite veil and I heard the first tear. I savagely ripped it off, along with the jeweled pins and the weighty neckpieces. After second thought, I tucked them in my sari. No sense leaving bread crumbs. The stones were priceless. I could sell or barter them.
With those expectant thoughts, I blinked, after what seemed like endless crawling and ducking, bumping into Preeta around a hard turn, where the tunnel took on a different character. Older. Only one corroded pipe. The other snaked off down one of the side tunnels.
Preeta halted. “There. The tiger pen.” She thrust the candle where a pipe connected in a T formation though another hatch.
Must be under or even in the zoo. Deadened tiger yowls and basso trumpeting sounded.
Preeta shot a bolt and wedged the hatch open. “Through there!”
The candle guttered alarmingly in a breeze smelling of sewage, cat pee, and moldy straw.
“Yes, it is smelly, is it not?” Preeta giggled softly.
“Preeta! Is it safe?”
“If one is quick, there is a place to wriggle past the tigers. I will leave you now,” and she handed the candle over.
Her teeth shone in the tarnished light filtering from outside. I glimpsed dead grasses and stained cement as she waved vaguely to her left down the tunnel, hissing, “That way. Keep going. You will be nicely surprised, but if you are caught and tortured, you know nothing. Remember your friend who tried to help you!”
I heard the guttural call of tigers and a pong that suggested caged beasts. “Preeta! You are mad. Come back!”
“Shhh. Only a short way, Sar-ree!” Preeta scorned. “By the time tigers see me, I will be gone. There is a place I crawl under and be near…” She stopped. “Never mind who.” She giggled and vanished in a snatch of yellow silk, it too disappearing to the louder snarl of tigers, leaving me braced for her screams.
True enough, she ran, crouched, in a ditch, with the big cats lazily fanning tails and only arousing when Preeta rolled under a fence. There was a dip where bars were embedded, too small for the beasts but large enough for Preeta to squeeze under.
Alone in the dark, I sank against the wall, fanning the candle, holding my breath as the stub guttered. Having it go out did not bear thinking about. Oh, dear God! I recalled the wormholes leading off from the main tunnel. Probably can’t find your way back in the dark, whispered my imp.
I checked the candle, biting my lip. “Damnation! I should have demanded how far.” I wonder if she even knows, my imp commented, with a harrumph.
Okay, I bargained, either follow Preeta, mentally judging a race against a tiger and wishing the zoo lay outside the wall—or feel your way back to the scallop shell.
The candle’s light leaked no farther than my nose. Pitch blackness filled the tunnel from the zoo hatch forward.
Wait until Preeta returns from her rendezvous, the imp suggested.
I briefly wondered with whom. Just eunuchs? Could it be? They too were prisoners, of a different sort. Oh, stop! You’re just delaying things!
Vexed with indecision, I sighed and again held my breath as the tiny flame struggled. “Besides, there were no promises Preeta would return this way!” I told myself. “I could sit here until doomsday, waiting. Move!” Bent over, I hastened in the direction Preeta had vowed would lead to freedom of the streets.
****
Twenty minutes—or an hour—later, I lost direction as the tunnel took random turns. I had tried to ignore more black mouths leading off with newer pipe connections, or the dwindling height of the candle stub as, ahead of me, the tunnel greedily swallowed my flickering light.
“Eughh!” I looked down at my wet knees. I now crawled through a quagmire with a fishy reek.
Holding my breath, shielding my candle from the wet, I swatted the sooty strands aside, at the same time feeling my hair stringed with something greasy. “Ughhhh! Wish the bloody maharajah could see me now!” I was whistling in the dark and knew it.
My knees wore holes in the fragile silk, and my veil was long lost. I began laughing in the growing dark.
“Perhaps even such as he would be off-put.”
Talking to yourself now, is that it? Are we sure this exits the palace? It doesn’t seem too promising at the moment. Perhaps it pops up in another tiger pen? Or worse? What exactly are we showing them, eh, my imp of doubt carped. How to meander lost through moldy tunnels?
“Oh, do shut up!” My breath blew out like a bellows—and so did the candle.
“Oh, no. No!” The candle flared once, went out, and something crawled across my face. I swatted my cheek, coming away with decayed vegetation, but ignored that, aware I could see my hands!
The next instant, I squinted at a beam of light spearing through a crack in the ceiling. Oh, dear Lord! So close! I touched the bright patch the size of my thumb. At least that. The swampy-ness dwindled to damp, and fustiness resumed, though the fish smell, puzzlingly, grew stronger as the tunnel slanted slightly up.
I followed the dim glow. Perversely, the ceiling lowered. When crouching became uncomfortable, I elbowed on my stomach.
Committed, now, girl. No way back, the imp nagged.
Hallelujah. Filtered light just ahead…greenish light.
I crawled faster. “It has to be outside!” I breathed. “Soon I will be free! Come hell or high water,” I vowed prophetically, “I will be free!” As I neared, I realized, with a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, the glow came through a flimsy-looking grate hung with dried scum. Reaching out, I gripped the barrier, crying, “No!” On inspection, it appeared old. Probably brittle. I peered between segmented reeds and bamboo shoots outside, spying daylight and tops of palms.
I eyed the grate balefully. I hated it—shook it. The setting was damp. I could scratch the perimeter with my fingernails. “I’ll be out in seconds.” I laughed crazily, keeping the reeds and an early twilight tantalizingly in sight, I sat up, then wedged my knees behind me to lie prone, pulling and pushing at the grille, soon finding I had no real advantage and it was more secure than I first hoped.
Thirsty and hot, beating the heel of my hand against the metal more in frustration than hope, my nose detected unseen water as from a stagnant pond. I laid my head on my hand.
“The grille seems so rotten, and Lord, I’m thirsty.” But the grid held fast. Scratching at the dried scum, I found each strand was braided brass in place of iron.
I checked for breaks, finding none. I pressed my cheek; squinting beyond the thicket of segmented canes that blocked my view, save for a ragged slice of sky turned ominously black. It smelt like rain. I licked my lips.
A bamboo stalk lay bleached and dead just beyond. With my fingertips, I tediously dragged it through, digging the tough broken end at the bottom where the grill was set in mortar. A poor digging tool but all I had.
After a half hour, the grille made a tiny chuffing as I shoved it experimentally. It did move a fraction. Just a little? Maybe. I was frustrated and hot, but the wall seemed crumbly as cheese where I had been digging at the bottom.
I changed to the right side, poking, gouging, and wriggling the woven metal until sweat dripped to join the miasma beneath me. My hands were slick. The reed kept slipping. I was aware, too, that the light was dimmer, the air heavier, and I hoped it wasn’t India’s infamous monsoon gearing up. Was it the season? The water level seemed inches below where I lay.
I was definitely hungry, and even thirstier. I had only nibbled at a plum before this mad undertaking a hundred years ago, too agitated to eat, before the wretched Preeta approached.
Haven’t exactly planned this out, have you? You could be having tiffin and tea and wallowing in pillows, back in the seraglio.
“Or fighting off the beast,” I snarled at my irritating imp.
Blocking renegade thoughts, I squinted past the reeds before the light failed completely. I could be anywhere, even outside, as Preeta had promised, though with a sinking heart I grasped that I had only her word and frantically renewed gouging before panic drained me.
They’ve searched by now. I wondered about Preeta, too. Is she back? Professing ignorance of where I might be? Or confessing her own innocence?
“I saw Sary go behind the scallop shell…”
But then she could not use the way again.
I halted, hearing an alien sound. A tiny splash.
I waited. Dare I call? Anybody there? A worker? But I detected only a slow drip-drop echo behind me.
I calculated. “We walked the tunnel forty-five minutes, no more than an hour. After Preeta left, I crawled another half hour, maybe, and then I have pried this blasted grate at least an eternity—no more than three hours, all told; that would put it around seven, yet twilight for hours…”
A wave of dizziness dropped me low.
“I’ll lay my head on my arm, off the mud. Just a while. It’s the air. Thick and moldy…”
Just a moment…afterward, I’ll…
Chapter Twelve
Primitive Beasts
I awoke with my arm numb, outstretched under my head, and one hand still gripping the grate.
Where am I? I muzzily looked about. I checked the grate. Still the same. How could I be so gullible? Yet daylight. How could that be? Is it tomorrow? The light had an early-morning feel. I moistened cracked lips. Goosebumps prickled my arms despite the clammy heat. I looked back into the dark.
“Preeta’s the only one who knows I’m here.”
If she didn’t think you escaped!
“Be quiet!” I screamed at my imp. The sound reverberated and died.
Feeling pitchforks of hunger, thirst, and loathing, I searched the tunnel, picturing myself crawling blind for days through the dripping labyrinth, down one dead end to another, hopelessly lost.
To die down here alone? With no marker…no mourners?
“Don’t be silly. Someone will hear me!”
Outside, wind rustled the segmented reeds, the sound like bones clacking against each other, accompanied now by an odd wet snuffling and burbling. I listened hard.
Pigs? The smell of pigs was inescapable, yet this odor was definitely briny.
Suddenly, I did not wish to make any noise.
Yet somehow I recognized the old Sary, whoever she was, and knew she would not give up.
Savagely, mindlessly, I renewed digging from my cramped position, alternately tugging and pushing. “Confound you! Move!” Just as I spoke with little hope, the wall beside the bottom left corner abruptly crumbled into brittle chunks. I stared at the tiny breech, too small to get my hand through.
I renewed gouging and halted.
Something low—a sound—a voice or a gargled cough. Close by. The sound wasn’t quite human.
“Hello-oooo?” I tried.
A squish-splash answered, as if something heavy dropped into a body of water.
I prepared to call again.
The sound stuck in my throat.
From time to time, I imagined I heard a burbling, sometimes, farther off.
Then a miniature tide splashed weed-flecked water through the grille. Even parched I couldn’t bring myself to test it. It had a brackish odor foul to the nose. However, the wave shoved a floating reed aside, verifying the pond was inches below the tunnel level, also affording a bigger slice of outside world. Beyond, an iridescent dragonfly flitted and sipped; farther off, a water-strider skimmed the surface.
The dragonfly rose lazily to another patch of brownish water. The dragonfly’s freedom
made me viciously lever the tough cane, holding my breath to ward off a soup of fish stench mixed with rotted weeds arising from the muck stirred by the loosening base.
Of a sudden, the air thickened.
I could not have cut the heaviness with an ax—between swampy-ness and the tunnel’s fusty odor; while the outside heated the gumbo, I was close to swooning.
I rested, sucking in rank air like soup through a tea towel. Between slowing my breathing and turning my head, I continued digging mushy mortar, mindlessly cursing, “Like they built the bloody Taj Mahal down here!”
The grille remained unyielding.
Sucking bloodied fingers, mindlessly pulling and pushing, I thought it was hours later the grate caved outward, flattening the black-ringed canes with a lazy splash. Nothing dramatic to herald such an auspicious occasion. Suddenly I chilled with the realization that if I had not reached the tough broken reed, I’d still be…here.
Sweat dripping in my eyes, I stared out, stupefied. Wild to be free, I impulsively stuck my head out, resting my cheek on murky water. Then I wiggled my shoulders through and, by scrunching them, managed an arm through.
I didn’t care what lay beyond as long as I could see city streets and people on the other side.
Half out…all but my hips…just past these last reeds… I stretched my arm as far as I could, pushing and grasping for anything solid—more reeds, floating weeds… Resting, I peered through the cane to get my bearings, and—stared straight into a crocodile’s dead yellow eyes—or some godforsaken beast.
“Oh, my sweet Lord!” I breathed. I was frozen, scared to move for fear of alerting the beast, yet I was well in its glassy immovable stare. I galvanized when one eyelid slowly blinked from the bottom of its eye socket, and tried to wiggle back.
A crocodile.
Yet it wasn’t.
Straight out of hell, whatever it was.
A reptile with a long sword-like snout malformed in some hideous way.
Even in shock I recognized it was nothing like crocodiles or alligators from childhood books. It still floated, unmoving, with the rise and fall of the water. Then it slowly lifted one clawed foot on stumpy, back-bended legs.
Sary and the Maharajah's Emeralds Page 7