The silence stretched out. He wished he could explain why he had rescued her. But he did not understand it himself and the words would not come.
‘I am in your debt.’ She broke the silence. ‘I thought about escaping, but I saw what they did to other girls who tried.’ Her voice trailed off. She looked away, hiding the fear that had yet to leave her. ‘One of my friends took that path. They cast her body out and let the dogs eat it. I was not brave enough to go that way.’
‘Then I am glad I got you out of there.’
‘Why would you do that for me?’ She looked at him again.
‘Is it not enough that I came?’
The girl considered. She scrutinised his face, as if searching for the answer. ‘Yes.’
She turned away and spoke in little more than a whisper.
‘You saved me. I was their possession, nothing more. They thought of me as a pretty decoration with no more value than a beautiful painting. I was there to look pretty and to smile at the men who came, no matter how ugly they were or how much they stank.’
Jack said nothing. He reached for her, his hand grazing her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, not wanting his touch.
‘I always knew that when my beauty faded I would no longer be useful to them. I had seen it happen before, to the girls who were there before me. If I was lucky, I would have married one of the guards. Some of them were kind to me. Some were nice.’ Her voice wavered but she did not stop. ‘Otherwise one of the leaders would have taken me, for a while at least. After that, I would have been given to the women upstairs, the ones who serve any who can pay. I might have beenthere for a year, perhaps two. Then, when the last of my beauty had faded, or if I got with child, I would’ve been thrown out to work on the streets.’
She turned to look at him once again. Her face was smeared with tears, her skin blotchy and creased.
‘That would have been my fate, Jack. So yes, I am grateful. I owe you my life.’ She said nothing more, hiding her face in her hands.
He reached for her again, and this time she did not push him away. He lifted her face away from her hands and stroked a finger down her cheek, her tears cold on his skin.
‘You asked me why I came for you.’ He paused as he summoned the courage to carry on and reveal the sorry truth. ‘I had nothing else. I’m a thief. I steal people’s lives. Or at least I did. I don’t have to any more.’
He offered a half-smile as he thought of Major Ballard. After fighting for the Empire under the stolen names of other men for two years, Jack had been given back his identity. The British intelligence officer had handed him a set of discharge papers in his own name, a reward for a job well done. At the time, Jack had been delighted, sensing a way to leave his life as an impostor behind. He had not fully understood quite what that would mean.
He let go of her and looked away, unable to meet her searching gaze. He had gambled his new future on a wild escapade when any sane man would have translated the fleeting looks and muttered conversations he had shared with the beautiful girl as nothing more substantial than the gossamer-thin veil she had worn. It was the act of a fool, and it shamed him.
‘I was alone,’ he continued, unable to hold back his confession. ‘I wasn’t a soldier any more, even a fake one. I was just me.’ He looked back, seeing she had not moved. ‘And I had nothing.’
‘So you risked your life to rescue a woman you did not know?’
‘Yes!’ He became more animated now. ‘I didn’t think about it. I just knew I had to do it. I had to do something, even if it meant fighting. Even if it meant dying.’ The words rushed out, like a battalion of redcoats unleashed to the charge. ‘I needed a purpose. I saw you and I realised how sad you were, how frightened. So I decided to get you out, to give you a new life. And I loved every bloody second.’ He could not stop now. The words had opened his soul, revealing the rotten core hidden inside. ‘Something happens to me in battle. I know I can fight. I know I can kill. But it is more than that. It is who I am. Sometimes I believe it’s the only thing about me that is real, and, God help me, I want it. I want to fight just so I can prove myself.’ He sank back into the cushions. He had never spoken like this before.
‘You are a fool, Jack Lark. There are easier ways to get a woman on her back.’
He laughed, the bitter spell broken by her mockery. He reached out and took her hand as he rebuilt the barriers in his mind, sealing off his blackened soul.
‘I knew you wanted to leave,’ he said. ‘You told me so yourself.’
Her smile was barely there. ‘I did not expect you would be foolish enough to come and take me away.’
‘Then you do not know me.’ Jack’s smile was quick, hiding his emotions. It was easy to be glib.
‘No.’ Her voice was serious. ‘I do not know you. But I do know that they will come for you now. They are dacoits, and they will not let you leave unpunished for what you have done. They will know what steamship you are on. Where you are going. When. You are in danger now.’
‘Then I’ll go someplace else.’ Jack’s voice caught in his throat. He had been lost, but now he had been found. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He looked at her. ‘Where will you go?’
‘I will go home.’ The answer came quickly. She was certain in what direction her own future lay.
‘I could take you, if you like.’
‘It is a long way. You have done enough for me. I could not ask that of you.’
Jack lay back. He considered the idea. He had no plans other than a vague notion to return to London, to a mother he had not seen for years. He was in no hurry. No career beckoned, no friends waited to welcome him home. He was alone, without a future or even much of a prospect of one. Until now.
He smiled. ‘I have decided. I’ll take you home.’
‘I warn you, it is a long journey.’
‘I would travel to the edge of the earth to be with you, love.’
‘Fine.’ She laughed at something in his earnest expression. ‘You can take me to Delhi.’
‘Delhi!’ Jack sat up quickly, something he immediately regretted as his vision swam. ‘It’s at least a thousand bloody miles away!’
‘You said you would travel to the edge of the earth for me,’ the girl giggled as she teased him, ‘but now a thousand miles is too far?’
Jack threw back his head and laughed at the madness of what he had done. He had not felt like this for as long as he could remember, and he savoured the sensation. He had forgotten what it was to be so alive.
He reached across and took the girl’s hands in his own. ‘I shall take you to Delhi. But first you must do one thing for me.’
She watched him closely, her face suddenly guarded as she waited to hear the price she must pay.
Jack smiled at her expression. ‘You must tell me your real name.’
The girl laughed, her hands leaving his and rising to cover her mouth. Then she paused, hesitating as she considered the request.
‘The men who took me told me to forget my name.’ Her voice was small as she answered him. All signs of her laughter had disappeared. ‘They called me Saradha, named for the goddess Saraswati. All the girls were named for the gods. We were not allowed to use our given names. We had to forget who we were, who we had been before.’ She lifted a hand and wiped eyes that were suddenly brimming with tears before touching her throat as she tried to compose herself. It took a moment, but when she had herself under control, she fixed Jack with a smile that sent a shiver running down his spine.
‘You fought for and rescued a girl without even knowing her name. You are a strange man, Jack Lark.’ She paused, shaking her head at his folly before looking him straight in the eye. ‘My name is Aamira, and I thank you for saving my life.’
The Grand Trunk Road, May 1857
Jack pulled back the curtain that passed for a window in the dak gharry and sighed. The view was the same as it had been hours earlier, and it was unlikely that it would be any different the next time he stirred himself from his t
orpor and bothered to look again. They had been on the road for a week, and his senses had been dulled into submission, what interest there had been in the suburbs of Calcutta half forgotten now they were far from civilisation. Now only matted jungle smothered the land, the twisted greenery of the tangled foliage stretching as far as he could see. Dense, thorny undergrowth formed an impenetrable barrier alongside the edge of the road. Vines entwined around the bamboo and forest trees as if choking them back, the low-growing scrub jealously trying to tether its taller neighbours to the ground. Despite such cloying attention, the trees soared up, breaking free of the lush melee and fighting their way through the dense canopy to reach the distant sky.
In a few, rare places, sly, fetid creeks wound their way alongside the road, the air above them teeming with a million insects. The dak would be attacked by a swarm of tiny bodies, the air so thick that it was hard to breathe. Jack and Aamira would be forced to hide their faces away, burying them in the dak’s pillows until the vehicle was far enough away for the plague to subside.
Every so often the road passed through a tiny village. There was little to recommend the dank and squalid mud communities, but Jack would always relish the chance to see the local people, even the meanest collection of houses inhabited by a vast multitude of men, women and children. At every village, armies of naked children would dash out and run alongside the dak, creating an energetic spectacle as they cavorted at the roadside.
Otherwise there was little to see, the repetitive scenery causing the days to merge into one, the tedium only interrupted by the overnight stops at the ubiquitous caravanserai that waited to greet a weary traveller at the end of the day.
The backdrop might have been monotonous, but the great road teemed with life. They had passed a dozen bullock carts in the last few hours, the drivers hunched against the sun, their animals plodding through the stupefying heat. Dozens of natives walked alongside the road, their bright pagdis and saris adding splashes of vibrant colour against the ever-present greenery.
The previous day they had travelled alongside a column of sweating sepoys, the sight of the armed men a reminder that the road was the lifeline of the country. For the thousands of men stationed up country, the Grand Trunk Road was the only road in, and the only road out. For decades British regiments had traipsed along its length, the footsore soldiers pounding their way over the thousands of miles that separated the great ports of Calcutta and Bombay from the hundreds of cantonments and garrisons dotted throughout the enormous country.
On two occasions their vehicle had been forced from the road, detouring around the gangs of native labourers working to the orders of the scarlet-faced British engineers who were engaged in a constant battle to keep the vital artery flowing. Such work was of the utmost importance. Without the Grand Trunk Road, the three presidencies of Bombay, Bengal and Madras would be nothing more than disconnected settlements, the power of unified government lost in the vast distances that separated the three great colonial capitals.
‘You’re letting in the dust.’
Aamira sounded as bored as Jack felt. He closed the curtain and fell back on to the cushions and pillows that lined the inside of the dak gharry. It was a comfortable way to travel, if you could afford it, with plenty of space for two passengers to lie back and relax. He did not mind spending the money; he had plenty, the legacy of his one attempt at burglary. He thought of Abdul el-Amir, the owner of the inappropriately titled Hotel Splendid in Bombay. Abdul had tried to have Jack murdered; his reward was a beating and the loss of the valuables that now resided in the vaults of Cox and Cox in Jack’s own name. The army’s agents were well used to dealing with all manner of objects appropriated by the officers of both the Queen’s army and the East India Company. Life in India offered numerous opportunities for reward, and there were many respectable agencies ready to help turn such objects into a healthy cash deposit, for a reasonable fee, of course.
Jack reached across and poked his companion in the side. He was rewarded with a snort of disapproval, and he smiled. It was hard to find too much to dislike about their journey. The scenery might have been about as varied as a monk’s wardrobe, but he could not find the will to complain when he was able to share the experience with such a beautiful travelling companion.
He nestled back into the pillows before lolling lazily on to his side and reaching across to her. He used a single finger to gently push back the thick strand of dark hair that whispered across her face. His finger caressed her skin, a feather-light touch as he traced a pattern across her cheek.
She closed her eyes. ‘That’s nice, Jack. You can keep doing that.’
He obeyed, adding more of his fingers, moving them slowly across her face, his touch like gossamer. She smiled, relaxing. Jack stared at her in rapt fascination. He could not recall ever having seen a woman as beautiful.
‘Don’t stop.’
He could not help laughing. His fingers had slowed as he contemplated her face, and she was ordering him to continue, unwilling to forgo the intimate touch.
She opened one eye as she heard his chuckle. ‘And what are you finding so funny?’
‘Nothing, love, you lie back and take it easy now.’
The single eye narrowed. ‘Why am I suspicious of a man telling me to lie back? Do you think I am some kind of back-street houri?’
This time he could not contain a guffaw. ‘I apologise. I will attend to my duties with more diligence in the future.’ He spoke in the clipped, urbane tones of the upper class, an accent that he regularly slipped into despite the fact that he no longer wore the uniform of an officer in the British army. It was taking him longer than he had imagined to forget the character he had lived with for so many months and years. He might no longer exist under an assumed identity, but he was discovering that being plain Jack Lark took as much of an effort of will as it had done to assume a rank and a station that was not his own.
‘You’ve done it again.’ Aamira opened both eyes to plead with Jack as he once again allowed his fingers to still.
‘Am I to be your servant now?’ he teased her. ‘You might want to sound a little more grateful. I should’ve been on a bloody ship by now. Not stuck in the arse end of nowhere attending on you.’
‘It was your own doing.’ She teased him back in equal measure.
‘It was not. You’re the one who wouldn’t leave me alone.’
‘I was working. It was my job to be nice to you, firangi.’
‘Now you tell me!’ Jack pulled his hand away. ‘So I shouldn’t have bothered rescuing you?’
‘Do you regret it?’ She continued to tease him, but some of her playfulness was gone.
‘Not for a second.’ It was Jack’s turn to be more serious. ‘You have given me back something I thought I had lost. I should be the one thanking you.’
Aamira nodded. ‘Yes, I like that answer.’ She lay back, arching her spine like a cat. ‘It is so very hot in here, do you not think so?’
‘It is hotter than Hades.’ The moment he spoke, Jack felt a shiver run down his spine. The words reminded him of another life, and of a battalion laundry where the air was hot enough to leave a permanent flush on the faces of the young girls who toiled at the great boiling coppers.
Aamira reached out for him, her fingers warm on his skin. ‘It really is so very hot. Would you help me out of these clothes? I think I will be happier without them.’
Jack looked down and saw what she had in mind. The memories of his past fled as he leant forward and once again began to do as he had been told.
The sound of shouting woke Jack with a start. He had been dozing. The hottest months of the year were some way away, yet the heat still built steadily through the day and the soporific motion of the dak usually lulled him to sleep during the sweltering hours either side of midday.
The vehicle came to an abrupt halt and both occupants were thrown forward, their rest coming to a sudden and painful end.
‘What the hell!’ Jack cursed as he b
anged hard into the far wall of the travelling compartment. He threw back the curtain. The light seared into his eyes with all the force of a canister of grapeshot, the gloom of the interior blasted aside by the fierce midday sun. He looked out in time to see the driver and his two assistants rush past, their legs pumping furiously in a state of obvious terror. The native men, women and children journeying on foot near the dak were scattering to the wind, abandoning the road and the luckless firangi.
He searched ahead, his heart pounding as he looked for whatever had caused such sudden horror. He blinked hard, his eyes protesting at the glare. He could make out a cloud of dust moving towards them at speed. Whatever it hid was closing on the abandoned carriage fast.
He thrust his head and shoulders out through the tangle of thin sheeting that passed for a window. ‘Come back!’ he yelled, knowing it would do no good. The servants were already a dozen yards away, and it was clear they would not stop until either their legs or their hearts gave out.
He faced the onrushing cloud of dust. Through the murk he saw what had caused such panic, and he understood immediately why the dak’s crew had fled. He pulled himself back inside and reached for the knapsack that had fallen to the floor when the carriage had been brought to a chaotic halt.
‘What is it?’ Aamira grabbed at his shoulder.
He shook off her hand and rummaged through his pack, scattering his few belongings in every direction. He muttered curses as he worked, berating himself for his stupidity. He had become complacent. He had learnt the hard way never to be unprepared for a fight, but the long, dreary days had deadened his sense of danger and he had let his guard down. He would now pay the price for his foolishness.
The Lone Warrior Page 3