by Alyssa Deane
* * * *
When the explosion came, about an hour later, Roxane was rocked to her knees. She threw herself over Sera's prone form, guarding her from bits of debris falling off the ceiling and the glass that rolled, shattering, from the tables. The myna on its perch squawked in a display of irritation, leaping up once before settling down again, sleek black feathers ruffled. Forgetting herself, Roxane ran to the window, peering out at a mushrooming cloud of yellow smoke and rubble, pursued from beneath by another of red dust, pressing the first upward, inexorably, to the white sky above. In an instant, Ahmed was at her side, yanking her away.
“Stay back,” he ordered, with less than gentle manner. “It is not only your life at stake."
Roxane backed away from the window, understanding fully, for the first time, the enormous risk her friend had taken in saving her from the king's servants.
“What was that?” she asked, subdued.
“I suspect,” answered Ahmed, “it was the magazine."
“Who ignited it?” She spoke without thinking, perhaps speaking more aloud to herself than to the man who trod the carpet beside her. He paused in his pacing to glower at her with an angry eye.
“Think you that because they are my people, I will know their every plan and move? I do not. Perhaps it was one of your own kind who set it off, to keep it from the hands of those they despise, though in that it would be a futile act. The main magazine was transferred from the city some time ago. If it pleases you, however, I shall endeavor to discover the truth of the matter."
Roxane shook her head at him, but he seemed not to notice and stalked from the room, robes whispering in his wake. Sera crossed the carpet to throw herself into her sister's arms. Roxane gathered her close, crooning above the child's head.
“I am much afraid, here, Roxane,” Sera stated, echoing her own sentiments. Roxane, as an adult, understood that they were captive, held prisoner by the danger of their appearance outside of Ahmed's apartments, in the palace, where the rebels had made their headquarters. For Roxane had learned of the Meerut rebels throwing themselves upon the mercy of the old king, begging his approbation and support, and even camping within his courtyard, treating his beautiful residence with a contrary disrespect they appeared, in their desperation, not to understand. Sera, on the other hand, was only a child, and her fear of the situation was based solely on instinct and the imprint within the context of her own experience. It was this which frightened Roxane more than her own misgivings. She determined they would leave as soon as she could discover a way to do so.
“Sera,” she said, “I want you to promise me that you will not, under any circumstance, leave my side again until this is all over. Do you promise?” Against her hip, Sera nodded her head. “Tonight, after it is dark, I will see what can be done about going home, but I do not want you to go without me, do you hear? You will wait until we can go together. There will be no more of this running off in stubborn pursuit of your own way. Do you understand?” Again, Sera moved her head in affirmation. Roxane petted the girl's black hair. She longed, in a manner that deliberately separated her from her apprehension, for the simple domestic tool which would enable her to brush her sister's hair.
Hours passed, and the noise of rioting within the city still drifted through the window, unabated. As night fell, Ahmed appeared to relax, and provided Roxane with the brush she requested and a repast which he himself served, spread upon the low table near the open casement. A single candle burned, shielded by a curve of colored glass from the light breeze.
After the meal, Sera sat down to play a game Ahmed had provided, upon the floor. The candle's illumination danced in her hair and across the almond skin. Assured that the girl was occupied, Roxane asked if there was some place she could wash and make corrections to her own appearance. Ahmed showed her to a room adjoining, where there was a full-length glass and a basin of water. As he departed, he let the heavy curtain fall into place over the doorway and Roxane stood a moment in darkness, shutting her eyes on the fear the darkness provoked.
When she finally regained her equilibrium, she looked around. There was no window in the small chamber, nor another door leading outward. Roxane walked the perimeter, careful not to bump the furnishings, and came around once again to the mirror and water basin. In the other room, she heard Sera squeal, a definite sound of pleasure, and therefore not one for alarm. Breathing again, Roxane washed her face, then removed the upper portion of her garment to study in the dimness the injuries beneath. Someone, she noted, had carefully tended them; considering his caution, it could only have been Ahmed who had done so. Blushing despite her resolve to accept that there was no other choice, Roxane quickly covered her naked body, then proceeded to brush the length of her hair. In the darkness, her reflection in the mirror did not reveal the color of her eyes, and she looked very much like a native woman with her dark hair brushed smooth. Her skin was pale, it was true, but she had seen some Indian women whose complexions, like Sera's, were a light, creamy brown. Under cover of night, she and Sera might pass for an Indian and her daughter, and thus escape the city, if they were careful....
Still, they must first escape Ahmed, whose fear for their safety was tantamount to his apprehension for his own, and he would not be motivated to easily release them. Perhaps he could be convinced to join them, then? She owed him her life, and would be happy to repay that debt by seeing that he remained free of harm, even if it meant he must stay within the British camp. Yet, he was independent in nature and not likely, in this time of crisis, to look kindly upon the aid of the Bengal Army, especially when it might mean an imprisonment such as her own and Sera's. No, she must think of something else, something else which would gain them their freedom and still ensure Ahmed's security.
Roxane returned to the main room, where she found Ahmed squatting near the floor beside Sera, explaining patiently some particular point of rule. Moved to recall their friendship, a friendship which had been stifled in the passage of a matter of days by the actions of the world around them, Roxane smiled and stepped nearer.
“Ahmed—"
“Roxane?"
Roxane drew her breath in sharply, and backed away. She witnessed Ahmed's head snap toward the sound of the other voice, shifting the weight of his body over his knees as he rose, spinning like a tiger. His hand went into his robe and came out, a flash of well-honed, polished metal in his grasp.
In the doorway, the slate-gray eyes of the man in Pathan dress glanced once at the dagger, and then lifted to the face of the prince wielding it, eyes glittering with involuntary hatred. If there had been nothing in the passage of the past several days to grieve Roxane, the sight of that alone, of hatred where once there had been an uncommon affection, smote her fully to the heart. She made a noise, of pain, of sorrow, and, pushing past Ahmed, positioned herself between the two men, extending an open hand toward each.
“No!"
She was not looking at Ahmed, and so did not see the staggering shock that seemed to take him in the stomach as he realized what he might have done. Her eyes were on Collier, on her husband, and he blinked once in surprise, then again in recognition, as he strode forward and took her into his arms.
“Oh, my love,” he whispered. “My love.” And he wept, with only a little noise, into her hair. Roxane clung to him as to life itself, waiting for the moment to pass. Her own tears ran silently down her cheeks, unheeded.
Later, when Collier, too, had eaten, and Roxane had tended to the wounds he had ignored for nearly too long, he told a tale of horror in an emotionless voice, of Meerut and of the journey through the night. Roxane stopped him to tell him that she had gotten Adain back, only to lose the horse again, and he had merely smiled at her with unfathomable sadness, stroking her unbound hair.
“My brave, sweet girl,” he murmured, for her ears alone, before continuing.
He spoke of the condition of the Delhi encampment and the British residents. Sera crept near, to his knee, and Roxane knew what was in her min
d.
“And what of Papa?” Roxane asked Collier, already knowing the answer. If all was well, he would have said so immediately, rather than come to this point when nearing the end of his tale. She took Sera's hand into her own, waiting. After a long moment, Collier shook his head.
“Unlike so many others, he was brought home to die, by men who remained loyal to him to the end. Expected to be asked no more, they departed when he did, to join the rebel forces."
Sera began to cry, but refused to be picked up and comforted by either Roxane or Collier. It was Ahmed she accepted, Ahmed who scooped her up into his arms and went to the window, blowing the candle out as they passed. Roxane could hear the sibilance of his voice, murmuring words that only he and Sera would ever know.
Collier leaned against the chair back. Reaching up, Roxane smoothed the hair from the widow's peak with her fingers.
“I'm sorry, Roxane."
In the darkness, Roxane shook her head. She wanted to hear no more words from him on the matter of her father. If she broke down now, there would be no end to her tears, for it was all, of a sudden, bound into one.
“He loved you, and Sera. He told me there was—"
Roxane pressed her fingers to his lips, climbing blindly from the stool where she had been sitting, into his lap. With a small grunt, he pulled her up closer against him and kissed her, tenderly, on the brow. She pulled her knees up, balancing the bottoms of her feet on the rail of the chair arm. In her all-encompassing grief, she wanted to make herself small again, like a child, to be protected and petted and comforted, even if only for a very little while.
* * * *
Roxane sat in the open casement, her knees drawn to her chest. She had taken a sheet from the bed and wrapped it close about her body. Her feet were tucked into the flying end of cloth. Angling the side of her forehead against the stone, she gazed out the window. Dust from the explosion two days ago still hung in the sky, dimming the last of the night's stars. Below, in the distance, fires blazed with a copper heat, edging the horizon like a misplaced sunrise. Dawn was still a silvered line, vaguely seen. Behind her, in Ahmed's bed, she could hear Collier's gentle snoring as he lay on his back sleeping the sleep he had not found in nights prior. With a plan of action in his head which he had not yet revealed to her, he seemed still somehow relieved, and calmed, and had dropped off as if drugged. Sera slumbered not far away, on a mat. Ahmed had once again vacated the rooms for a bed elsewhere; Roxane did not know where, or with whom. Presumably, it was someplace where his presence would not be questioned.
She and Collier did not make love. It seemed neither prudent nor pressing. But neither did she turn from him, in her grief and with the residue of nightmare still clinging like the heavy air itself through every day. At night, she lay at his side, curled back to chest, hip to hip, in silent communion. She felt his heart beat, and the warmth of his skin, and was comforted by the absent stroking of his hand through her hair or along the arm which lay outside the linens. Of her attempts to comfort him, he would have none. It was not long before she recognized that he feared to be weakened by them.
I want to go home, she remembered saying to him with the plaintive voice of a child, so like Sera, sometime in the small hours of that first night.
The British had, for the time being, abandoned the ridge, he told her, disclosing the last of the harrowing events to which he had been privy. Of Roxane's home with her father, all that remained was charred ruin. There was nothing to which they could return.
And Papa? she had asked him.
I buried him, he told her in a voice that was flat and toneless, beneath the floor of Cesya's hut. He will lie there undisturbed.
After that, Roxane did not speak. In time, he ceased his mechanical caresses and dropped his hand to her side, entwining his fingers with the fingers of her far hand, which she had crossed over her body, laying them, curved, along the arch of her hip.
“I love you, Roxane."
She closed her eyes when he said that, until the tears seeped out, but she refused to weep again.
Sitting in the window, enjoying a respite from a confinement which kept them all clear of windows and restricted to Ahmed's rooms, Roxane breathed in the relative cool of the waning night. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer for those with whom she had been imprisoned in that dark place. Fifty of them, in a room no larger than this one; fifty of them, dead, while she yet lived. For that, she must be grateful; for that, she must not bemoan what was no more, at this point, than an inconvenience. There had been children there, beneath the pipal tree, who had died in horror.
With unconscious instinct, her hand moved protectively across her abdomen. Collier did not yet know of the murders of those women and children. Of this she felt certain, for if he did, she did not believe he would be content to suffer this restraint, not even for her sake. When he did learn, when they all learned, there would be no force, no power of authority, to hold them back from vengeance.
Sitting in the window, she shivered with a dread that went deeper than anything she had yet known.
She heard Collier stir behind her, reaching across the thin mattress in search of her sleeping form. In a moment, he was rising from the bed. She listened to the soft noises he made as he fought his way into his trousers, and a small domestic smile appeared on her lips, despite all other misgivings. Turning her head, she watched him in the pre-dawn gloom. He ran his fingers through his hair. Gaze alighting on her where she sat, he moved to join her, standing against her back. The sheet slipped down, just a little, as he encircled her in his arms, pulling her to his chest. She leaned her head back onto the curve of his collarbone. His flesh was warm, and wonderfully solid in a world where all anchors had dropped away. Kissing her temple, he blew on the fine hairs that clung to his mouth and tickled his nose.
“Collier?"
“Yes, sweetheart?"
“I killed a man. In the city. I shot him."
Without speech, he smoothed the hair back from her brow, pulling it up over the top of her head. He held it there, with his hand, lowering his chin onto his fingers. She could feel him breathing, long and deeply, against her spine.
“But the man who had your horse ... I let him go, even though I thought he had killed you. I don't understand."
“Hush,” Collier whispered, above her head.
“I think ... I think it is important not to be cold-blooded, not to seek retribution, even should you find ... should you find that...” Her voice trailed off, at a loss to explain to him, when she did not want to reveal the terrible truth. She drew a deep breath and slowly released it. Outside, a flight of cormorants arrowed across the dull gray sky, east to west. The sun was not yet in their wings.
“I know about the massacre in the courtyard, Roxane,” he stated, after a time. “I heard yesterday, when I was trying to get to the telegraph office. Vengeance will come, unless cool minds prevail. But that will be for neither you nor I to decide, Roxane. It has risen like a madness into every man's blood. Ahmed's. Mine. It is a strain which rises up between us daily."
“I was one among those in the courtyard,” Roxane murmured. “Ahmed saved my life."
“I know,” said Collier.
“You know?"
“You talk in your sleep, dear.” His voice was strained, maintaining a false composure. The muscles of his body against hers had stiffened almost imperceptibly, but she felt them, felt their tense constraint, across his chest and along the length of his arms. Silently, she watched the flight of pigeons from a palace wall, vivid shadows flashing skyward, white, then amethyst, then white once more as they rose and wheeled in a tight circle before descending to repeat the process.
“It is dangerous to remain here much longer, Roxane,” he went on, the breath of his words stirring the fine hairs that had escaped his fingers, “where at any moment we may be discovered, with little to no chance of escape. Ahmed's own life is at risk, or he may be forced to give us up."
Roxane stared a moment
longer out into the graying city. She remembered the expression she had surprised on Ahmed's face, when first she had regained consciousness. “Would he do that, do you think?” she asked.
Against her back, Collier shrugged.
“I believe not,” he said, “but I would not care to find out that I am wrong. I have decided that as soon as I can make arrangements, we will depart."
“For where?” Roxane whispered. “I thought you said there was nothing left of the British camp."
His arm tightened about her as he dropped his hand and lowered his head, close to her ear. The sound of his voice vibrated across her skin.
“We will head south, to Calcutta. I hear that the British are still in control. You and Sera can take ship there, to England—"
“I will not go."
He sighed and turned his head. She felt the light pressure of his mouth against the curve of her jaw, just below the ear.
“The point may be moot, anyway, dear, if the rising reaches Calcutta before we do."
“If we do,” Roxane reminded him.
“We will. We must. I have a plan for the three of us, and I—"
Roxane touched her finger to his lips, angling her head to listen to the sound of Sera's stirring on her mat, but the girl did not waken. Interlacing her right hand through Collier's left, Roxane brought it to her mouth, kissing the ridge of knuckles between her fingers.
“What of your position here? We are far from Calcutta, and the direct route will be the most dangerous course. Therefore, you will be a long time gone. Will that not be considered abandonment of your post, Collier?"
For a long minute, he made no reply. He breathed against her spine, in and out, in a steady, even rhythm. If he felt any concern over his next statement, there was no evidence of it there.
“I have already done so, Roxane,” he whispered, calmly, “by coming here to search for you, and not following the rest of the officers in their flight to a place of reconnoitering."
Roxane bit her lower lip. Shimmering like water readying to overflow a pewter bowl, the sun hovered on the horizon. Already the underwings of the pigeons were stained with fire. Soon the brief sojourn at the window would, of necessity, come to an end. Roxane felt her heart begin to beat more rapidly. She blinked back moisture from her lashes.