Dark Road to Darjeeling

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  Robin looked at the jar briefly and sighed. “It is a male. I already have a male. One must have a male and a female to breed.”

  “Oh, dear,” I murmured. I opened the jar and told the lizard to leave, watching idly as he crawled into the grass, casting bitter glances behind him.

  “But it was kindly done,” Robin said hastily. He fell silent, a pensive pall upon him.

  “Are you quite well today, Robin? You are woolgathering.”

  “My mother calls it building castles in Spain,” he told me. “Why Spain?”

  “The saying is an old one. When it was coined, Spain was very far away and exotic. Now I suppose we ought to say building temples in India,” I said with a smile.

  He did not return the smile, but merely gave a heavy sigh and returned to his fishing pole.

  “You did not answer my question, Robin. Something ails you. If you want to talk, I am rather a good listener,” I said. I reached into my pocket and retrieved a packet of chocolate biscuits. What the lizard could not do, the biscuits accomplished. He sat up and took a handful, crunching them appreciatively.

  “I was starving,” he said. “I forgot to pack anything at all to eat. Usually Lalita makes certain I have some chapattis and cheese, but she was not in the kitchen today,” he said, referring to the delicious native flatbreads.

  “Is she at Pine Cottage?”

  He nodded, his mouth full.

  “I am not surprised. My cousins live there, and the elder of the pair is quite ill. I’m afraid she is going to die quite soon,” I confided. I hoped that offering a bit of ghoulish news might be just the trick to gain the confidence of a boy with such unsentimental interests. Of course, I was perfectly aware of how loathsome it was to offer up Emma’s suffering as fodder for gossip, but that did not deter me for even a moment.

  His eyes rounded. “I heard she had an operation. Dr. Llewellyn did it.”

  “He did. With no proper anaesthetic. Only a bit of morphia for the pain.”

  Robin crunched another biscuit. “Then it was really rather pointless,” he said at last. “She endured a very painful operation, and now she is going to die anyway.”

  “Yes, well. At the time, she hoped the operation would cure her. Unfortunately, her disease was too far advanced for Dr. Llewellyn to be of any real help.”

  Robin rolled his eyes. “Dr. Llewellyn is little help to anyone these days. I feel sorry for him, of course, but he is entirely useless.”

  “He is deeply unhappy,” I told him.

  “He drinks,” Robin contradicted flatly.

  “He drinks because he is unhappy,” I corrected. “It is unfortunate, but there it is. Your father tells me you used to see quite a little bit of him.”

  Robin nodded. “He taught me a bit of medical knowledge for my animals—how to apply tourniquets and bandages and set bones, that sort of thing. It was wildly interesting. I thought for a time I should like to be a doctor myself. But then one has to deal with people, and I like animals more than people.”

  “I do not blame you,” I told him truthfully. “The more I see of people, the more I like my own pets.” I felt a rush of homesickness for Grim, my beloved raven, a souvenir of my first investigation. My butler, the devoted Aquinas, was caring for him in my absence, but no place would seem like home until I heard that familiar quork. “I have a raven, you know,” I said suddenly.

  Robin’s eyes rounded. “Do you? I should love to have a raven. I kept a buzzard once, but the Indians use them for picking the flesh from corpses, and when the staff discovered him in my room, they all left at once and we had nothing to eat and no sweepers.” Sweepers, contrary to their title, were not solely occupied with cleaning floors. Their primary task was tending to the removal of non-hygienic wastes. They came from the caste of untouchables, and if they had fled, there really must have been a terrible stigma attached to the buzzard.

  But talk of the dead had sparked my curiosity. “Is there a burial ground here? A churchyard, I mean?”

  He nodded. “Not far from the crossroads is a plot of land given over to burials of the English. The Indians have their own ways, of course. But the Cavendishes contributed a parcel and paid for things like the fence and gravestones. Father presides when any of the English die, but of course it happens so seldom. Not since Freddie,” he said softly.

  He returned to his fishing pole, twitching the line.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Sometimes,” he said, blinking hard.

  I chose my words carefully, treading with caution upon a slippery path. I was uncertain how much of Freddie’s personal life he might have confided to the boy. On the one hand, adults seldom talked of such things before children. On the other, Freddie was a great child himself, and perhaps he had been in some way proud of his little peccadilloes.

  “Robin, there were items taken from the Peacocks. Taken by Freddie. Now he had a right to take them,” I hastened to add. “They were his by right of inheritance. But he took them secretly and no one seems to know why. Do you know what he might have done with them?”

  To my astonishment, he rose, scarlet-faced and clearly angry. He jerked the pole from the water.

  “I do not want to talk about Freddie,” he said, his face turning an alarming shade of puce. “He is dead and gone, and he is never coming back. Never!” he cried, taking to his heels.

  I sat back, amazed at the strength of his reaction. Even the gentle prodding into Freddie’s activities had been far too much, just as the smallest poke can inflame a sore tooth. He could not bear the slightest pressure where Freddie was concerned, and as I rose and dusted off my hands, I realised I had uncovered a fresh lead. Robin knew something of Freddie’s unsavoury activities, and I had only to craft the proper approach to learn the extent of Robin’s knowledge.

  I returned to the Peacocks to find the place in a flurry of activity. Miss Cavendish was instructing the maids and cooks in preparing an array of food for the festival, and when I saw her, she greeted me with a look of self-reproach.

  “Lady Julia, you must forgive my neglect of you! I always forget how much work goes into the festival,” she explained, wiping her brow with a handkerchief.

  “It looks as if it will be a wonderful time,” I told her, my mouth watering at the tables groaning with bowls and platters, each carefully covered with cheesecloth or muslin that had been weighted at the edges with beads to keep flies from the food.

  “It always is,” she assured me. “Quite different to what you will have been used to in England,” she added somewhat stiffly, “but it is very important to the pickers and one likes to keep them happy.”

  I glanced at the lavish display and smiled. This sort of excess would not be simply to keep the pickers happy. It spoke of extravagance and celebration, and the English clearly indulged as much for themselves as their pickers.

  “Shall we simply eat ourselves into oblivion or will there be entertainment as well?” I asked.

  “Plenty of entertainment,” she assured me. “The natives will dance and sing, although if you are not accustomed to their harmonies, it sounds like the music of the devil. And there will be conjurers and fortune-tellers, of course.”

  “I met with one—the old woman who sits at the crossroads.”

  She gave me a look of mystification. “What old woman at the crossroads?”

  “The one with the leper’s clapper and the begging bowl. She dresses in veiled white and keeps her grandson with her to interpret for she has lost her tongue to the disease.”

  Miss Cavendish continued to look puzzled, and I persisted. “She has been there most days when I have passed the crossroads. She is not entirely in her wits, I think. You must know her.”

  Miss Cavendish shook her head. “I daresay she is passing through. This valley is remote, but some travellers prefer it to the other ways into the Himalayas. There are no brigands in the valley proper, only on the road beyond, and if the woman is alone save for a little boy, she would naturally wish to
be safe.”

  “Perhaps,” I said slowly. I had no sense of the traveller about the woman. She had seemed a fixture of the place, content to sit day after day at the crossroads, collecting her alms and dispensing her curious words.

  “No matter,” Miss Cavendish said briskly. “I daresay she will pass on her way soon enough, and if she does not, we will give her money to go. We have no leprosy in the valley, and we do not want it.”

  She hastened off to return to her preparations and I trailed slowly up to my room, wondering about the mysterious old woman in white and if she was some odd apparition come to haunt only me during my stay in the valley.

  I need not have concerned myself that she was an apparition, for as our merry party left the Peacocks the next day for the festival, she was in evidence, sitting at the crossroads with no sign of the little boy. I hoped all was well with him and would have stopped to ask, but the granny merely waved me on my way, turning from me as I passed. She behaved as if I had somehow offended her, but I could not imagine how.

  I was walking with Portia and Plum, but Portia was far too occupied with fretting over leaving Jane to pay attention, and Plum waved off my concerns when I related quickly the story of the strange old woman.

  “Julia, she is a poor beggar woman. Leave her in peace,” he said flatly. I opened my mouth to remonstrate with him and snapped it shut instead. Nothing about the day was turning out as expected. I had thought to go with my husband, but he had gone ahead to help Harry with some of the preparations, the putting up of booths and such, while Miss Cavendish and most of the staff had hurried on with handcarts full of food and drink. Mary-Benevolence remained behind to attend to Jane, and Portia was only reluctantly persuaded to leave her. Plum seemed prickly and out of sorts and rather eager to pick fights, and I made up my mind to get as far away from him as I could at the festival.

  As we arrived at the appointed site, I realised how easy a feat that would be. All of the pickers in the valley had gathered at the festival ground. The size of a small village green, it was the only truly flat space I had seen in the valley aside from the private gardens. It was bordered on one side by the road and on the other by a thick bit of jungle, overgrown with trees and vines that provided an impenetrable wall of green as a backdrop to the colourful gathering. Prayer flags and bunting had been strung from poles and tall deodar trees and tied with ribbons and bells, while long tables had been covered with vibrant cloths and heaped with platters and bowls of food, both English fare and the traditional foods of the Hindus and Nepalese of the valley. Another table had been set some distance apart and laden with offerings of thanksgiving to the gods, fruits and vegetables and a tremendous arrangement of tea leaves, as well as bowls of sand stuck with joss sticks scenting the air with jasmine smoke. The whole effect was one of colourful abundance and lively good fortune, and I said as much to Miss Cavendish when I found her arranging plates of plum cakes.

  “It does look rather nice, doesn’t it?” she said, smiling in satisfaction. “Mind yourself when the feasting is finished,” she warned with a nod behind her. “That is when they fling great handfuls of coloured powder at one another. They do not throw them on the English, but it is quite impossible to avoid it.”

  Just beyond where she stood there were great clay bowls heaped with powders in vibrant colours, a bowl of bright blue, another of the sharpest pink I had ever seen, orange and green and yellow.

  “For what purpose?” I asked her.

  She pursed her lips. “Ask a dozen of the natives and you will get twelve different answers. It’s something they have always done, and it is quite harmless. They all go to the lake and bathe themselves afterwards, and anything that encourages their cleanliness is to be supported,” she finished, stacking the last cake. This last remark seemed a trifle unjust. From what I had seen of the local folk, they were cleaner than most English, preferring to bathe regularly and with great vigour.

  I wandered off then, lured by the music and the dancing. An impromptu band of sorts had been formed with native instruments, various drums and pipes and flutes, with a few peculiar stringed instruments the like of which I had never seen. The music was odd and quavering, unlike anything I had encountered before, and I was sorry Brisbane was not there to hear it.

  I looked around suddenly, wondering what had become of him. I spotted Harry Cavendish, laughing with a clutch of his pickers, but Brisbane was not with him. I walked the circumference of the festival ground, peering into each group before I realised I might have saved myself the trouble. Brisbane was easily the tallest man in the valley; only Plum rivalled him for height, and no one stood head and shoulders above the natives.

  Just then Jolly strode in front of the band and raised his gong.

  “The dinner is served!” he announced in English, and from the mad rush to the food tables at his next words, I suspected that was precisely what he said in Hindu and Nepali as well.

  I made my way to the English table where I joined my siblings, the Pennyfeathers, and the Cavendishes. Dr. Lewellyn appeared at the last minute, his colour pale and his clothes a trifle unkempt, but his eyes darted around quickly, and his movements were quick as a hummingbird’s. I made up my mind to watch him, even as I wondered where Brisbane was. The chair next to me remained empty, and I caught Harry Cavendish’s eye at one point and lifted my brows inquiringly.

  He came to me and knelt beside my chair. “I am so sorry, Lady Julia. Mr. Brisbane asked me to deliver the message to you that he would not be here for the dinner, but hopes to join us for the dancing afterwards. The post just arrived by messenger and he wished to read his letters, some urgent business, he said,” Harry finished vaguely, and I smiled tightly.

  “Thank you, Mr. Cavendish.”

  He had the grace to flush. “I have failed abjectly in my mission. I ought to have found you straightaway and told you, but it quite slipped my mind.”

  He left me then, and Plum jogged my elbow. “Penny for your thoughts.”

  “That my husband is an unmitigated bounder,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Plum pulled a face. “You will find no argument from me.”

  “Do shut up, Plum.”

  He spread his hands, his expression mockingly innocent. “I am merely supporting your view of the man. If you say he is a bounder, then I am forced to agree.”

  “Yes, well, he is my bounder and I will not hear a word against him, particularly not from you,” I told him. The words were harsh and not entirely deserved. Plum had been remarkably restrained in his attentions toward Miss Thorne. She had been seated at the far end of the table, and I had not seen his gaze travel there more than once or twice during the course of the meal.

  At length we finished the feast and settled in for a recitation of poetry by the children, most of which escaped me entirely as it was rendered in Hindi or Nepalese, and then the dancing began in earnest. The musicians struck up a lively tune and the natives all began to dance. The entire valley population seemed to have turned out, save for Jane and the Phipps girls, all kept at home by indisposition. And Brisbane, I thought bitterly, who was doubtless using the time to engage in some investigative sleuthing. The least he could have done was told me, I reflected. I could not have gone with him; it would have been far too obvious if both of us had been absent, but I might have at least enjoyed a discussion of his plans.

  I fumed and fretted through the beginning of the dancing, although the music was oddly infectious. Everyone joined in the singing or dancing, the workers left their pots and pans aside, and even the leprous old granny crept near, tapping her clapper in time to the music. There was something oddly grotesque about this, but also entirely pathetic and I found a sudden rush of pity for the woman, a stranger in this valley, sickly and condemned to a terrible, wasting end. It was the first time I had seen her stand, and she was taller than I thought, although she leaned upon a sort of staff, as bent and gnarled as her back. She must have been an imposing woman at one time, and the sight of her ruin
was difficult to bear.

  I turned back to the festival, tapping my toe in time to the music, and determined to enjoy myself. I was lucky, I told myself firmly. I had my health, and a gifted and brilliant husband—difficult as he might be. I had family and wealth, and no right to feel sorry for myself when so many of the people in this valley had so little and still managed to be joyful.

  Just then, a scream rose high above the music. I thought it was the singing at first, for the music often sounded somewhat primitive to my ears, but the second cry was definitely a scream, pitched high with hysteria. The crowd turned as one to the direction of the cries, and then began to surge. I turned to see what the trouble was, and to my astonishment, found myself face-to-face with a tiger.

  That it was the same beast that had torn the pretty face from Dr. Llewellyn’s wife, I had no doubt. There could not be two such tigers in so small a valley. Its coat was black as pitch, I thought at first, but as it moved, I saw that it bore stripes, shadows upon shadows, creeping from the green darkness of the jungle.

  These were the things I thought as I watched the tiger advance slowly, with the most graceful movements I had ever seen. It was perhaps thirty feet from me when I first saw it emerging from the jungle, moving ever closer, crouched near to the ground, huge amber eyes fixed upon me. The pickers were crying and sobbing from fear, but I heard them only distantly. It was as if cotton wool had been stuffed into my ears.

  But suddenly, through the thickness in my head came the voice I knew best of all.

  “Julia, do not move,” Brisbane ordered.

  I could not see him. The only creatures within my line of vision were the tiger and the old granny, still leaning upon her stick. She was the only one who had not panicked at the sight of the beast, and I applauded her courage even as I felt mine desert me.

  And then, several things happened at once. First, the tiger sprang—without warning or preparation, it launched itself into the air, directly at me. Almost simultaneously, the granny flung off her veils and pulled a short club from her belt. Then a single shot rang out, cracking the air like the coming of doom. There was a spray of sparks, and the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder filled the air. The tiger gave a hideous scream and turned once in the air. It fell to the ground, landing hard, with one paw upon my shoe, its ebony claw piercing the soft kidskin.