by Alyssa Deane
“Hardly,” Collier had answered him readily enough, rubbing his arm, and empowered by the urgency that was making the need for secrecy a trivial consideration. “I have lately married a most remarkable woman, Hugh."
“Have you?"
“Her name"—he had grinned like an idiot—"is Roxane."
Now, surrounded by the violence of the night, he took the time to think of her, to recall the small details about her person which so endeared her to him, and to utter a hasty prayer for her safety. Then, rising from his crouch in the damp grass, he set her from his mind. He could not, from this point forward, afford to think of her again.
* * * *
Captain Craigie, a man beloved by his men, had eventually persuaded some fifty sowars to ride to the New Gaol. Lieutenant Mackenzie and another, Melville-Clarke, he who had aided Mackenzie in dispatching the man who was mutilating the dead woman in the carriage, were with them also when Collier finally came within hailing distance, pounding into their midst on his white stallion. The roads were thronged with frenzied natives, crying and shouting aloud, and roaring in confused approval as they approached, apparently mistaking them, in the darkness, for another faction of mutineers. Their pace increased as they neared the gaol, where men were swarming in the livid torchlight. Collier looked to Mackenzie, who was bloodied and smeared with dust. He had, he shouted to Collier, taken a fall from his horse only minutes ago, but was able to regain the saddle without too much trouble. The blood, he remarked, smiling with a grisly humor, might have been his, or perhaps another man's.
At the prison, they were too late, for the prisoners were already being released by blacksmiths knocking off their shackles. The jail guard, a contingent of native infantry, answered inquiries Collier and the others shouted to them by firing their guns at them. Wheeling his stallion around nearly onto its haunches, Collier followed the group back toward the cantonments. There was nothing else to be done.
The group split, Captain Craigie and most of his loyal sowars galloping to the European lines. They carried the regimental colors with them, cloth snapping in the harsh light of the flames. Collier accompanied Mackenzie and about a dozen volunteers to Craigie's house, where Mackenzie's wife and the captain's sister waited, having returned from the cancelled church service. Collier was both amazed and relieved to find the house not yet in flames, although the remainder of the row was a ballooning conflagration. Inside, the two women had managed to bring three double-barreled guns, along with provisions for loading, into the parlor. However, they had not loaded the weapons, for they did not know how.
Dropping to his knee, Collier quickly grabbed one of the weapons and began to pack it, swearing beneath his breath. Why was it that these women, that all of the women in this country, had not been taught the rudiments? Exasperated, he set the one gun aside, reaching for another as, from the corner of his eye, he saw Mackenzie taking his sister and Mrs. Craigie by the arm, leading them to the door of the house. There, the lieutenant called out to the troopers who had accompanied him. Collier rose, one loaded gun in his hand and his own reloaded and secured in his belt. Silently, he stepped up behind the other officer and the two women.
Mackenzie was commending his sister and Craigie's wife into the charge of the troopers. Collier watched as, like men under the influence of stimulus beyond their control, the sowars unhorsed in a ferment, throwing themselves down onto the dusty soil before the two frightened women. Seizing their feet into their hands, they pressed them against their foreheads, promising with heartfelt sobs to safeguard their lives with their own. Collier backed away from the doorway, up against the wall, the gun dangling in his hand. He blinked back his own tears, dashing a hand across his eyes and forehead. The blood from his hairline had nearly ceased to flow. Then he returned to his task, more grim-faced than before.
The only illumination in the house came through the windows, from the wildly dancing flames. Collier could hear the crack of gunfire along with the crashing fall of burned-through timbers. The mob was surging steadily nearer, their cries for vengeance and death fierce in the night. Beside him, Mackenzie loaded the last gun, patiently explaining to his sister how it was done, and then set it against the wall—for use, he explained, as a last resort, should the sowars turn.
As the lieutenant went upstairs to better view the situation from a second-floor verandah, Collier took up a position beside the door, his pistol leveled over his arm, calmly studying the mob, the sea of intense, sweating dark faces, eyes ringed around with an eerie white that glowed with the light of the fire. Bullets ricocheted with an angry buzz off the walls that remained standing, and sped into the night. Fire flashed in the length of arcing blades falling with splintering force onto the furniture which had been dragged from the burning houses. Personal items of every nature were scattered across the ground. Clothing from wardrobes was shredded with a ferocity of madness. The rabble scrambled for the more valuable pieces tumbling from sundered chests, or merely for those things which caught the eye, shining in the dust.
The sowars had judiciously retreated to a position of concealment along the verandah. In the yard, their horses snorted and jerked their heads in fear of the crackling blaze. Adain, white hide stained red with dust and spattered blood and the unearthly bloom of the flames, was straining at the tether, but made no sound.
“Are they coming any nearer, Captain?"
It was Mrs. Craigie, standing at Collier's arm. He turned to look at her, at the fierce light reflected on her pale skin, and the eyes wide with fear. He thought of Roxane, when she had risen from his bed and dressed, turning to regard him with such bravery in her stance, and in her heart. Briefly, he lowered his lashes over his gray eyes and felt the panic of distance contracting in his bowels.
Then, “Not yet,” he said, “but their number is growing. I think it would be wise if shelter were sought in some place"—he grimaced, indicating the walls around them—"where fire would not be a consideration."
“The temple,” Mrs. Craigie said, with quick thought. “There is a Hindu temple on the grounds. Where is Lieutenant Mackenzie? We must speak with him."
A moment later, Mackenzie appeared, echoing the same sentiment as Collier and Mrs. Craigie. Her husband, he informed them, was returning; Mackenzie had seen him riding toward the house.
“Is he alone?” Collier asked.
“No, thank God. The sowars are still with him."
“I wonder what news they bring,” murmured one of the women softly, drifting closer to the door.
“Has word been sent to Delhi, Lieutenant?” Collier asked, still watching the rioting natives through the door. When there was no immediate reply, he glanced back over his shoulder. The other officer returned his gaze wordlessly, and then shook his head.
“Why the hell not?” Collier demanded, forgetting, in his outrage, the presence of the ladies. “I will go straightaway."
“It's no use,” said Mackenzie. “The lines are down. Have been, since earlier this afternoon. They were, and significantly I would say, cut sometime before five o'clock. It was a flying wire,” he added, “that unhorsed me earlier."
Collier pivoted his head in frustration. “Some sort of concerted effort must be made to stop these rebels before they reach Delhi,” he said.
Near him, Mackenzie started, frowning. “What makes you think they will head for Delhi? Does it not make more sense for them to disperse to their homes?"
Collier drew breath before answering. He shifted the weight of his gun, lowering it to his side. His blood-encrusted sword scraped the wall as he moved and left a long, silvered scar on the whitewash.
“This outbreak is only the vanguard,” he said. “I suppose, in a way, we might be grateful that it is happening now, rather than three weeks from now, on the anniversary of Plassey, as I believe was planned. Prematurely, there is a significant lack of cohesion, which may, if we act upon it, save a great deal of time and loss of life. However, that will only happen if the rebels are prevented, and with great s
how of force, from going on to Delhi. For in Delhi lies the element to bind them, to renew centralized purpose and their own sense of reason and righteousness. In Delhi, sir, is Mohammed Bahadur Shah, the last of the Moguls. If he is convinced to endorse their cause, to provide his patronage, countless rebels will flock to fight beneath that banner."
For a moment, there was absolute silence. Even outside, the noise seemed, temporarily, to abate. “God in Heaven,” breathed the lieutenant, at last.
There was little discussion after that. Collier parted company with the two officers and their family members to attempt to make it through to the parade ground of the 60th Rifles, where the Dragoon Guards were reported to be readying themselves for action. Adain, released from restraint, was most anxious to be off. Collier steadied the horse, and then swung up into the saddle. As he did so, his finger slipped through a hole in the pommel where a bullet had passed, barely missing striking both the horse and himself, for the exit trajectory was clear. Hauling on the reins, he brought the stallion's head around and forced him to leap forward into an immediate gallop. Adain jumped the fence, charging through the press as if winged, hooves slashing at unprotected heads and shoulders while Collier laid about to right and left with the length of his sword. A dense smoke from the burning buildings had shifted with the wind, hindering him, but served to obscure his progress. All around, the muted thunder of buildings toppling earthward rocked the ground. The world, it seemed, had gone insane, for this was not even war as he knew it, but something distinctly more primal in content and malignant in execution.
Arriving at the parade ground, Collier found a more insidious form of chaos, for it appeared to him that those in uppermost command had lost their ability to function. Orders that made perfect sense, he found, had been countermanded, while others were passed around as if for consensus. As bad, in the dense smoke, as futile orders was the near impossibility of discerning any particular concentration of mutineers, and so only a few rounds of artillery had been discharged in the direction of a shelter of trees where someone had thought to hear voices. The bridge which crossed the Abu Nullah and which led onto the Delhi road, was without any concentration of defense at all.
Collier, spying a young captain of the Dragoon Guards, raced up to him, nearly bringing Adain onto his haunches. After exchanging a few words with the young man, an enterprising officer by the name of Captain Rosser, the fellow ran off in the direction of Brigadier Wilson. Collier later heard that Rosser took the initiative to request two squadrons of the regiment and several horse artillery guns, with the intent of pursuing the rebels to Delhi, but he was flatly refused, as Wilson “did not wish to divide the force."
Collier, however, did not bother to wait at that time for the outcome, nor for any permission to be granted. Spurring Adain forward, he clambered across the bridge and onto the metalled Delhi road. It was only forty miles to the city. Adain was a sturdy, intrepid animal. And he himself was armed, and alert, and held no further illusions regarding the tenor of the night. Most of the mutineers were on foot, some of the prisoners from the gaol still hampered by shackles not fully removed. They would, for a time, keep from the road, fearing a pursuit that was not, apparently, coming. If Collier rode hard and fast, stopping for nothing in his way, he had a good chance, God willing, of making it to Delhi before the rebels, in time to warn the cantonment of their imminent arrival. And if, by some chance, they arrived ahead of him, he could at least find Roxane and so safeguard her from the terror he had witnessed this night.
On the other possibility, of meeting the mutineers and his own death on the road, he refused to permit his thoughts to dwell.
Chapter Eighteen
Delhi
Roxane awoke with painful suddenness from a brutal nightmare. A sheen of stinging perspiration lined her brow, dripped between her shoulder blades, soaked the loose bodice of her gown. In her breast, her heart pounded like a crude engine. With the heels of her palms, she rubbed at her eyes, then smoothed the disheveled locks of hair from her brow. For a few minutes she sat very still behind the curtain of netting, listening to the sounds of the house around her.
The scent of breakfast carried up the stairs, of some sort of fresh fruit, and hot coffee. The cook, who was a Moslem, hastened these mornings through breakfast, for he was in the habit of eating his own at the same time he prepared for the household and, with Ramadan in its sixteenth day, no food or liquid could pass his lips once the sun had risen. Within Roxane's room, there was just enough of gray misty light to show her the green of a gecko, clinging to the bedpost, engorged on its nightly repast of mosquitoes. Dawn was not far away.
The lizard flicked along the post and onto the floor as she tossed back the sheets and leaped from the bed. Hastily, she scrubbed her face in the tepid water standing in the basin, then her arms, and her perspiring body. The towel hanging on the rack of the stand was still damp from the night before. The days were heavy with the threat of rain, but it had not yet begun. Instead, the sky hung over them all like a brass dome, without release. Roxane dressed in a lightweight gown, then brushed and bound her hair. Even though she had been in India more than a year, she had never become accustomed to having a servant perform these small duties for her, and daily rendered her own toilet, forgoing assistance.
In the hallway, she stood a moment as a wafting tendril of woodsmoke entered her nostrils. Yes, she thought, she had been dreaming of fire, of fire as far as she could see it, of fire all around and buildings crashing earthward, to ember, then to ash. It was nothing, a fear provoked by the smell in the air and her own feelings of unrest. A dream, and no more.
She entered Sera's room only to find it empty, with every indication that her sister was already up and about. Annoyed at the girl's continuing careless regard for her clothing, Roxane picked up her discarded nightdress from the floor. She folded the soft material over her arm, and placed the garment at the bottom of the bed. A book which she had given Sera yesterday to read in an attempt to take her mind off her disappointment at the cancelled outing with Ahmed and Collier and several others for the shikar, was cast facedown and open across the cushion of the chair, with one of the pages folded back. Automatically, Roxane took the volume into her hands, attempting to smooth the damaged paper, as she wished once again she had not made such a fuss about the event to the girl. She should have known how disenchanted Sera would be upon learning it would not take place. She was, after all, only a child.
Roxane had her own reasons for concern at having to cancel Collier and Ahmed's hunting plans. She had received, simply, no word from her husband. Her husband. How strange, still, to think of him in that fashion, and yet how wonderfully comforting and joyous that knowledge.
Her father assured her yesterday that no telegraph of any serious nature had been received from Meerut, and she should not worry so over moonshake in a barrel. Collier, no doubt, had met up with old companions of his, and was spending somewhat more time than anticipated. He would return, soon enough, Max said, and after she had taken him to task for spoiling their plans, they could arrange them for another day.
But she had no intention of taking him to task for anything, her concern over his lack of appearance in the cantonment was so great. She went twice, herself, to the telegraph office, to discover that no wire of any nature had been received from Meerut since a rather unusual message from the postmaster's sister there to the woman's aunt, and then another, which the sender had obviously found cause not to finish, due to more pressing duties. Or perhaps, the young man had suggested, with a shrug of his shoulders, the lines were, as they so often could be, down and inoperable. They would, of course, be fixed by the morning. They almost always were.
Roxane had thanked him and returned home, no less comfortable over the circumstance than before.
Trailing downstairs, Roxane went to the dining room, where her father was drinking a cup of coffee. He had the newspaper folded stiffly back against itself in one hand and was engrossed in reading the latest info
rmation with the chair pushed away from the table, his ankle crossed over his knee.
His eyes lifted as she walked in, unseeing, and then he looked again, startled.
“What are you doing here?"
“I beg your pardon?” Roxane scooped a spoonful of diced muskmelon into a bowl in preparation to eat it. She did not sit, but speared a piece of the pulpy fruit with a narrow fork and popped it into her mouth. Across the table, her father lowered the paper.
“I thought that you and Sera were together,” he said, with a bewildered frown.
Slowly, Roxane took the fork down from her mouth, chewing the sweet melon as she tried to register his meaning. “Together? I have just woken up. When did you see her?"
“About half an hour ago,” Max said, sitting up in the chair and beginning, now, to show concern. “She said that she was going into the city. I assumed—and how could I not?—that she meant with you."
Roxane set the bowl down with a clatter of silver against china, dangerously close to the table's edge. Reaching out, her father moved the china receptacle from harm's way.
“We did not speak of it,” she said, striding toward the door. She paused there, to take control of herself. Breathing deeply, she pressed her skirt down over her hips, stemming useless hysteria. Why did Sera pick today, of all days, to be fractious? Could she possibly have gone into the city alone, in retaliation for her disappointment, or did she think somehow to yet save the day? No, Roxane chided herself, do not assume such a thing. Sera was somewhere around the house, waiting for her to awaken. “I'll ask the servants if they have seen her,” she said aloud to her father.
“Very good, then,” Max concurred, and relaxed, once more perusing the paper.
Half an hour later, Roxane had still not located her little sister and had been dismayed by the added discovery that Courage, too, was gone. The ayah, also, had disappeared, but it seemed, from what the other servants had to say, that the woman had left the residence late the night before carrying a satchel, along with two additional domestics, and had not returned.