by Jon Cleary
“How long do we stay here, Clive?” said the Nawab.
“Just for the night. I want to be down in Kalka by Wednesday evening at the latest.”
“I think we’d have been safer camping by the roadside. I take it you’ve never met Mahendra? Sometimes he can be as charming and sane as you and I—” He smiled at Bridie to let her know how charming he, at least, could be. “But other times . . . One of his ancestors was the biggest butcher in our history. Mahendra composes songs to his memory.”
“He must be charming,” said Bridie.
A man came to the gateway and beckoned to Farnol. The procession slowly made its way into the great courtyard of the castle. Farnol was surprised at the size of the courtyard; there seemed to be room enough for a small army. The coach was drawn up beneath a high portico attached to the main building; the Ranee and the coach’s three other passengers stood on the steps that led up to the tall, wide doors studded with big brass spikes. Nothing about the castle of Serog suggested any welcome to visitors.
Prince Mahendra was standing on the steps above his sister. He was a slim young man, younger than Farnol had expected: he could not have been more than twenty. He wore a pale blue silk achkan, the long tight-fitting coat that came to his knees; his head was wrapped in a pink turban and he had a magnificent ruby in the lobe of one ear. Round his neck was a double strand of spinel rubies, each as large as a small pigeon’s egg and his thin left arm seemed held down by the weight of the diamond-encrusted bracelet on his wrist.
“He must have seen us coming and got dressed in a hurry,” the Nawab whispered to Bridie. “This family is so bally vulgar.”
Today appeared to be one of Mahendra’s days of charm and sanity. He greeted all the women, with the exception of the Nawab’s wives, with a bow and a smile. He shook hands with all the men and Farnol was impressed with the strength in the thin brown fingers. He could see now that thin best described the prince. He was almost skeletal, as if his flesh had been worn away by the fever of his occasional madness.
“Do come in, how splendid of you to visit me! My sister insists that I always have the palace ready for her, but she never comes.” He kissed the Ranee’s cheek. “Mala my dearest sister, welcome home.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Bobs. Take us inside and see everyone is settled in. We’ll all be down for dinner, except Bertie’s wives. Put them in the zenana and see they’re fed.”
The Political Service had a dossier on Prince Mahendra, as it had on all the princes, great and small. Farnol had read it and he knew that Mahendra’s full name was Roberts Akbar Mahendra Kugar of Serog. At the time of his birth the Commander-in-Chief in India had been Sir Frederick (later Lord) Roberts; the baby prince’s father had been a great admirer of Bobs and had named his son after the general. The boy, as he grew older, had been labelled with the C-in-C’s nickname. Farnol was to wonder what the now retired field-marshal would think if he knew that a young madman now answered to the famous nickname.
The guests were led into the main entrance hall, which looked like a great roofed cloister with colonnaded arcades on three sides. The floors were blue-and-white marble, laid in an intricate Persian pattern; the domed roof was a diminished reflection of the floor, the pattern being the same but smaller. Everything looked as if it had been washed every day for centuries and Farnol wondered in surprise if cleanliness was one of Mahendra’s fetishes.
Mahendra put a brown claw on Farnol’s sleeve as he was about to follow Bridie up the wide stairs to the bedrooms. “Pray stay a moment, Major Farnol.” He had a soft singsong voice, that of a man who might talk or sing to himself for hours on end. “Have you seen your Major Savanna lately?”
The Ranee, the last to ascend the stairs, turned back. “What about him?”
Farnol stayed silent, letting the subject of Rupert Savanna lie between the brother and sister. He saw Mahendra’s eyes widen slightly, then narrow, and he wondered how long the prince’s charm was going to last. It was obvious that Bobs did not believe in wasting charm on his sister.
“He sent me a message that he would come down here last night. He didn’t turn up.”
“Does he come here often?” said Farnol.
“Of course not,” said the Ranee quickly. “Bobs doesn’t encourage visitors. The Major has disappeared, Bobs, but don’t worry about it. He’ll turn up.”
“I wasn’t worried about him,” said Mahendra and again Farnol saw his eyes widen, then narrow. “I don’t worry about anyone, not even you, Mala my dear.”
“Darling Bobs,” said his sister, put her hand on his cheek and Farnol waited for the blood to flow under her long nails. But she just patted him, then took her hand away and held it out to Farnol. “Come on, darling Clive. I’ll show you to your room. It’s next to mine.”
“How jolly,” said Farnol for want of something else to say.
“Whore!” Mahendra’s eyes remained wide this time.
“Perhaps, darling. But I’m a selective one.” Which, she seemed to think, was some sort of compliment to herself.
She led a reluctant Farnol up the stairs and along a marble-floored corridor to a door. “I have a suite next to this room. I’ll send for you when I’m ready.”
“Mala, old girl, that’s all over. You kicked me out a year ago, remember? You said I was never there enough to be—I think you called me your Constant Lover.”
“Darling Clive, I’m not asking you to be my Constant Lover. This is just for tonight, to keep ourselves amused. What’s the alternative? Playing bridge with Viola and those other dreary people.”
“You don’t really think they’re dreary. You’re just afraid you may have some competition from Miss O’Brady and Madame Monday.”
“And shall I?”
“Mala, in the past few days there have been three attempts to kill me. That sort of thing does nothing for a man’s potency.”
She smiled, ran the back of her hand across his cheek; he felt the sharpness of her diamond rings. “You’ve changed, Clive. Or you’re lying.”
She left him and went along the corridor to where a tall bearded Sikh stood outside a door. The guard opened the door for her, closed it behind her, then resumed his post, feet wide apart, hands folded on the hilt of a long heavy sword that looked as if it could take off the head of a buffalo with a single blow.
Farnol opened his own door and went into his room. Sitting on his bed was Private Ahearn.
4
I
Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:
I BELIEVE that the palace of Serog had five hundred rooms. Three hundred bedrooms, one hundred reception and withdrawing rooms, kitchens, storerooms, quarters for the staff of two thousand; but no bathrooms. I presently live in an apartment with four bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms; I have never quite understood what a half-bathroom is and presume it was invented by an architect for a client who believed in less than full hygiene. I mention this to point the difference between a 400-year-old castle in India in 1911 and an apartment in America today. Our present society has as much skulduggery, murder, rape, theft and other assorted crime as there was in British India of that day, but we have far less body odour.
The bedroom I had been shown to was out of the Arabian Nights rather than House and Garden. It seemed large enough to have held a small ball in; I can only assume it was the bedroom of one of the more favoured wives of a past prince of Serog. There was the largest bed I had ever seen; it was not a popular pastime in 1911, but one could have held a group sex orgy in the bed and still had room for voyeurs. Scattered about the room were more chaises longues than I have seen on the floor at W & J Sloane at sale time; the princess for whom it had been furnished could have flung herself down anywhere and never hit the floor. Two facing walls of the room were floor-to-ceiling mirrors; the canopy over the bed was also a mirror; if one stood in the middle of the room and looked at a mirror wall one could see oneself reflected into infinity. It was like looking at a regiment of oneself i
n single column of march, as I think Major Farnol would have called it.
In one corner of the huge room, where no carpet or rug covered the marble floor, servants had brought in a big copper tub and filled it with hot water. I was soaking in it, the servants having retired at my request, when the bedroom door opened and Major Farnol and a soldier stepped hurriedly in, shutting the door behind them. They both took one look at me in the bath, which fortunately was high-sided and hid all of me but my head, then Major Farnol grabbed the soldier and spun him round. They both stood facing the door.
“Forgive this intrusion, Miss O’Brady—”
“Goddam!” I swore occasionally in those days, though nothing like the young girls and actresses of today. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“I want you to allow Private Ahearn to stay in your room for an hour or two. Miss O’Brady, this is Private Ahearn—There’s no need to turn round, Ahearn!” The soldier had been about to pay his compliments to me, but Major Farnol roughly turned him back to face the wall. “He can guard you while you’re protecting him.”
“Protecting him from what?”
“He can tell you himself. I must go back to my room. Behave yourself, Ahearn. You’re on your honour as an Irishman and a gentleman.”
That did nothing to reassure me. Coming from a long line of Irishmen, I didn’t think the two titles were compatible. Judging by Ahearn’s smirk, neither did he; but he nodded and said the Major had nothing to worry about. He didn’t mention whether I had to worry or not.
Major Farnol opened the door a crack, peered out, then disappeared so quickly it was almost as if he had squeezed himself into a thin wraith and slid through the crack. Private Ahearn closed the door and continued to face it.
“There’s a dirty great Sikh down the hall, miss, outside the Ranee’s room. That’s why we had to duck in here in a hurry—the Major didn’t want him to see us. Will you be long taking your bath, miss?”
“I had intended having a nice long soak, Mr. Ahearn, but I don’t suppose that’s possible now. Do you have any sisters?”
“Seven of ‘em, miss.”
“Any of them nuns?”
“Five of ‘em, miss.”
“All right, imagine that you’re in the convent and I’m one of your sisters who is a nun. Keep your back turned.”
I got out of the bath with some difficulty, slipping once and falling back into it with a loud splash. Private Ahearn turned instinctively to help me, but I snapped at him to remain where he was. I managed to get out, dried myself quickly with one of the threadbare towels the servants had brought me. I put on my peignoir but left off my hat; after all I was in my own bedroom. Or at least the bedroom allotted to me for the night, public though it may have suddenly become.
“Turn round, Mr. Ahearn. You may sit over there on the blue sofa.” I sat down on a purple sofa some twenty feet from him; if he was to spend the night in here there must be no hint of intimacy. “Now tell me what this is all about. Are you the soldier who deserted this morning?”
“Yes, miss. I’m not exactly person gratis with the Major, if you know what I mean, yes.” He had a habit I’d noticed with certain Irishmen of finishing a sentence with yes, as if confirming their own statements. “But he’s put me on trust on account of what I know.”
“What do you know?”
“Major Savanna is here in the palace, yes.”
“Major Savanna? What is he doing here?”
“I dunno, miss.” It was obvious that he was not accustomed to being asked questions while sitting down; his feet were planted firmly on the floor, but he sat forward as if about to rise at any moment; his hands kept moving from the sofa to his knees and back again. Private Ahearn, a born rebel, had probably spent half his time in the army being interrogated, always standing at attention. “I seen him this afternoon when I first come in here.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Hiding, miss. I got lost coming down through the hills. I was heading for Kalka but I had to stay away from the road or the railway line, and I come here into the valley and seen the palace. I sneaked in here, the guards are pretty lazy, I suppose they never get anyone around here anyway, and I hadn’t been in the place ten minutes when I see Major Savanna. He looked pretty angry, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“Why should I want to speak to him, miss? I’m leaving the army, not joining it. I just turned my back and did a bunk.”
“Why does Major Farnol want you to hide in my room?”
“I was hiding in his room when he come into it. I come up here and I just picked one at random, if you know what I mean. I didn’t know youse were all coming here—”
“Neither did we. Major Farnol has probably told you what happened to our train. But you still haven’t explained why you have to use my bedroom to hide in. Why not the Major’s?”
“It’s because of the Ranee, miss. She’s a bit of a—if you know what I mean. Even us blokes in the ranks know all about her.” Private Ahearn screwed one hand into the other, kept looking intently at them as if he were trying to construct some Chinese puzzle out of them. The Irish are always embarrassed whenever anything relating to sex, no matter how peripheral, is mentioned. I think if Dr Kinsey had conducted his research in Ireland instead of Indiana he’d have been reduced to interviewing the donkeys. “The Major is afraid she’ll come into his room some time tonight, yes.”
I felt a slight pang of jealousy at that; then told myself it was premature on several counts. “Is Major Farnol going to ask the Ranee about Major Savanna’s presence here?”
Ahearn’s hand was now trying to peel his potato nose. “I dunno, miss. He does seem a bit put out by it all, I think.”
“What’s he doing about you? I suppose you’re a deserter?”
He nodded. “I dunno, miss. I could do another bunk, I suppose, but from what the Major told me, it don’t look too healthy in these hills just now. He’s told me to stick around, so I think I will.”
“Why are you deserting?”
He looked at me in surprise. “Miss O’Brady, you’re Irish, ain’t you? Would you be wanting to serve in the British Army?”
“I’m American, Mr. Ahearn, and I’m female, so I hardly think the opportunity would arise. Why did you enlist? Or were you press-ganged or whatever it is the British Army does?”
“Miss, I didn’t know what I was letting m’self in for. If you come from where I come from, you’d be joining even the Zulus. I dunno nobody in the army out here who don’t want to get out of it, except the officers and them fellers who’ve gone soft in the head from the heat and the dysentery and the fever, yes.”
In certain ways I was very innocent in those days. “But if you wanted a life of adventure, then you have it, haven’t you?”
“Miss, who said anything about a life of adventure? That wasn’t why I come out here.” He sighed, all at once looking very sad and small. “You sign up for seven years and if you’re a bit soft in the head and they talk you into signing up again, you’re out here for another five years. We get just over a bob a day, take away the stoppages—sometimes they stop you an anna for blowing your nose at the wrong time. They stop you for this, they stop you for that—sometimes I’ve gone a month without drawing a penny. Everywhere is out of bounds—they want you to live in the barracks, like you was in a convent. Well, I mean a monastery, you know what I mean. You never get to talk to a woman like I’m talking to you now—a native bint comes around and some officer or the sergeant-major, he shoos her off like she was a leper or something. It’s parades, parades, parades—parade for mess, parade for drill, parade for church. And me a Catholic amongst a lot of Orangemen. And when you ain’t parading you’re marching from one end of the blooming country to the other, yes. You ever been down the Great Trunk Road, miss? You oughta see that. Us poor blighters on the line of march up and down it, passing each other, going nowhere like only the army can send you. Then there’s the fever and the r
ash and the terrible food . . . If I had my way I’d give India back to the coolies and tell ‘em to—”He broke off, looking embarrassed again. “Sorry, miss. I got a bit carried away then.”
“Where will you go if you manage to get away?”
“America, Australia, somewhere where you can be something else but a ranker in an army that thinks you’re only half-human. Most of the officers don’t care about you and the officers’ wives are even worse—”
“Is Major Farnol like that?” I hoped to God he wasn’t.
“I dunno, miss. I think he’s a bit more human than some of ‘em.”
I stood up and he also rose. I looked past him at our reflection in the mirror-wall; we were reflected again and again. We looked ridiculous, I in my peignoir and he in his torn and dirty uniform; a battalion of soldiers and their camp followers? I just wondered how reliable a protector he would turn out to be. I shouldn’t blame him if he was concerned only for himself.
“I must get dressed to go downstairs, Mr. Ahearn. I shall have to ask you to turn your back again, please. No, don’t face the mirror. Go back and face the door.”
I dressed carefully, even though there was a strange man in my room. I don’t wish to go into my affaires d’amour, but there had been occasions when I had dressed with a man in my room, though none of them had been strangers. But I did not allow Private Ahearn’s presence to hurry me. I was preparing myself to compete against the Ranee when I got downstairs.
When I was ready I allowed Private Ahearn to turn round. “You look beautiful, miss. A real credit to the Irish.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ahearn. There is some fruit in a bowl over there. I’ll try and smuggle up some hot food to you later. Perhaps Major Farnol’s bearer, Karim Singh, can do that.”
“Major Farnol’s already thought of that, miss.”