Batraj had left her his telescope. She watched the walls fill with the familiar yellow and blue uniforms. But there were not enough of them. Everything would depend on the attitude of the people, and of this Batraj seemed very confident.
Guy was breathing heavily, and darting quick glances at his Thug guards.
Oh, my God, she thought, he means to make a break for it. That would give Batraj a perfect excuse for killing him.
She didn’t know what to do. Bedi and the other two were totally absorbed in watching the approaching battle. Laura bit her lip and looked back down at the valley. Batraj had halted his army out of musket shot of the walls, and an emissary was sent forward. Through her glass she could make out Bilkis on the walls above the gate, together with Colonel Mujhabi. Laura could not tell what was being said, but Bilkis was certainly not making any submissive gestures, and finally the envoy turned and rode back to Batraj.
Suddenly, Guy made his move. He kicked his horse violently, so that it charged forward causing Bedi’s horse to rear and snort. Guy swung his manacled hands, and managed to hit Bedi hard enough to tumble the big man from his saddle. Guy then seized both reins and broke into a gallop.
‘Laura!’ he shouted. ‘Follow me!’
How she wished she could. Instead, she calmed her startled horse and forced it to stand still. In any event, Guy was surely committing suicide, for the other two Thugs promptly gave chase, waving their tulwars.
Below them, the Thug army was just beginning to move forward, its banners — including the captured Union Jack —streaming, its cymbals clashing. But suddenly there came a flurry of bugle calls from the hills to the east. Batraj raised his arm to call a halt, and a line of redcoated Sepoys emerged above the wheat stalks, followed by another and then another, the early sunlight flashing from their swords and bayonets. At the same time, there came the explosions of cannon, and roundshot went bounding into the little valley.
The effect was instantaneous. The two men who had been chasing Guy immediately turned and rode back, and Guy plunged onwards into the safety of his comrades.
Batraj was waving his sword and summoning his men to retreat; he knew he was no match for an entire Company regiment, supported by artillery. He had been caught in a trap every bit as devastating as that he had sprung on Guy. The roundshot was already tearing through the ranks of his terrified people, and they were scattering in every direction, while the Sepoys, led by Company officers, advanced with measured tread to the beat of their drums.
The gates of the city opened, and Colonel Mujhabi brought his cavalry squadrons down the slope to join in the overthrow of the Thugs.
Laura caught her breath; she had never seen a battle before. But this was not a battle; it was a rout. The Thugs were already fleeing, some up the hill, others to the western end of the valley. Batraj’s army was no more.
Bedi seized Laura’s bridle. He knew nothing of her promise to Batraj, and wished to make sure she did not try to follow Guy to safety. She made no effort to resist him. She could only wait, and see what happened to Batraj himself.
Batraj had managed to rally a few of his people, led by Vijay Dal, and they were galloping up the hill as fast as their blown horses could manage. Batraj’s face was twisted with rage and frustration.
‘Where is the English officer?’ he shouted.
‘He has escaped, Highness,’ Bedi said.
Batraj turned his anger on Laura. ‘Your doing? By the great Lord Krishna...’
‘The Rani had nothing to do with it, Highness,’ Bedi said. ‘It was my fault.’
‘Fool!’ Batraj struck him across the face with his whip. ‘And you have lost your horse? Mount behind the Rani! Haste now! Haste!’
The Company soldiers were still advancing steadily, but now they had little to do; the last of the Thugs had fallen or fled. Colonel Mujhabi’s cavalry held the field, waiting for the advancing troops. They were making no effort to pursue their enemies; too many of them were their own kinsmen.
‘You have lost the day, Prince Batraj,’ Laura said. ‘Why do you not end this senseless dream, and surrender?’
‘And be hanged?’ he sneered. ‘Yes, I have lost the day. But I have not yet lost my head. I will yet drive those redcoated devils into the sea. To the camp.’
And they rode away from the city.
Bombay, 28 January 1828
This has been a terrible time for me; I have contemplated suicide.
Never can a man have been so grateful for the loyalty of his friends. I lost the battle, and not my life. I know now that I sadly mismanaged the whole affair and totally underestimated the scoundrel Batraj. Thus I was forced to watch my command cut to pieces. I was the only survivor.
They stripped me naked as the day I was born, and paraded me before their womenfolk, who were encouraged to do their worst. But no knives were drawn. Perhaps it would have been better had they been.
The true cause of my shame and misery is also the reason for my survival: the intervention of Laura Dean.
I loved her. In my nightmare midnight hours I love her still. And she is the most black-hearted harlot who ever drew breath. Yes, I say such harsh things of the woman who saved my life!
Yet against that isolated act of charity must be set the murder of my men, my own humiliation, and the fact that she is now an acknowledged Thug, who virtually drinks blood, who flaunts herself before her people and rides to battle like a Valkyrie. It was she who summoned me to surrender, and she who presided over the ghastly celebration of my defeat.
I have looked upon her naked body, smeared with blood. I have looked, and desired and wanted to strangle her at the same time.
But worse yet was the news that greeted me on my return here. A village on Company territory was recently attacked by these Thugs, and every living creature within it massacred save those carried off for sport. That it was Batraj who perpetrated this foul deed is undoubted, and that Laura rode at his side there too is equally certain; one of her rings, an emerald the size of a quail’s egg, which everyone in Bombay has seen and admired, was found amidst the carnage!
At least she and her frightful paramour have been checked in their career of horror. They took their army straight into the jaws of the trap we had laid for them, and were soundly beaten. My poor fellows have been avenged.
But Batraj and Laura escaped back into the hills, and although an immediate pursuit was this time launched, they have vanished. I suspect Colonel Partridge was not sorry to see them go. Batraj’s force has been entirely dispersed and thus he is without power, and the Colonel was somewhat reluctant at having to place Laura, an Englishwoman, upon the scaffold.
At the commencement of the fight I managed to make my escape. I even called upon Laura to follow me. What a fool I was! But at that time I did not know of the massacre at Slopan, although I doubt she would have come anyway, so besotted is she with this Hindu lover of hers.
Naked as I was, I rode into our ranks. This caused some ribaldry but also, oddly, a great deal of admiration. Colonel Partridge steadfastly refuses to blame me for the loss of my command, and instead praises my courage in surviving; apparently he had anticipated the loss of at least a company upon the campaign. Thus I am returned to Bombay something of a hero.
Of course word of what happened got about fairly rapidly, and the ladies are looking at me strangely, whether out of respect or curiosity I am reluctant to guess.
Following my return, I sank into the depths of despair, at Laura’s hideous perfidy, at my failure as a soldier, and at my own stupidity. But most of all because I still love her. I am the most cursed of men.
Now I must pick up the pieces of my life and resume my career.
Today I was invited to tea by the Partridges, and placed next to Prudence, who gazed into my eyes with the utmost devotion. In Bombay Laura is regarded as a murderous wanton, and Prudence clearly feels that I rescued myself from a fate worse than death. I suppose I will marry the girl. If nothing else, it will clearly advance my career.<
br />
Our new governor, Sir John Malcolm, is expected daily. He is by all accounts a fire-eating Scot, who will settle once and for all with these Thugs, I have no doubt. I intend to volunteer for every possible mission. I have a great deal to learn about soldiering in India, and I intend to do so, to wipe out the memory of my disgrace, and carry the war to the enemy.
Was there not a Greek philosopher who, having fallen into the gutter, reflected that the only course left to him was to rise?
7 The Mountains
The remnants of Batraj’s army straggled back into the camp.
‘We have lost a battle,’ Batraj declared. ‘We have not lost faith in ourselves.’
His men looked doubtful; they had certainly lost faith in him, as he could tell.
‘For the time being we will split up,’ he told them. ‘Scatter and make your own ways. When the time comes, I will summon you again to my standard. Then I will command a great army, and victory will lie at our feet.’
‘Where will you go, Highness?’ asked Vijay.
‘I will seek my own salvation. You will accompany me, Vijay, with my wife, the nurse, the Rajah, and five men. Pick them yourself, and tell them to choose their women; they can bring one each.’
‘Batraj,’ Laura said. ‘You have lost. You will never become Rajah of Sittapore, or even regent. Can you not at least let the boy go back to his people?’
‘The boy is my passport to power,’ he told her. ‘We made a bargain, you and I. Keep your part of it, or I will cut his heart out, and send him back without it.’
*
Batraj was in mortal fear of being captured, so he and his small group rode out within the hour, leaving the rest of the Thugs to make their own escapes.
‘There is no doubt that the Company will turn my own family against me,’ Batraj said. ‘And the spineless cowards will obey. We must find someone who will fight for us. And I know the very person. The Begum Sombre. We will ride for Agra.’
*
Laura had of course heard of the Begum Sombre. Her origins were obscure. Some said she had been a Persian slave who had been bought by a French soldier of fortune during the wars of the previous century. This man, Renaud, was of such viciousness that he had been given the soubriquet Sombre, but he had had the talent to carve out a jaghir for himself south of Delhi, including the fabled city of Agra, once capital of the Mughal Empire. When Renaud had died, his wife, now calling herself the Begum Sombre, had seized power, and kept it with the aid of a series of military commanders, all of whom had apparently been her lovers.
The tales about her were endless: she had blown her enemies from the mouths of her cannon; she had once buried two slave girls alive and sat on their grave smoking her hookah; she had been bound naked to a cannon by her rebellious soldiers, and yet survived to resume her reign. In her time, she had been the most beautiful woman in India, and she accepted no man as her master.
*
It took several days to reach Agra. They travelled in the hills, avoiding the valleys and the villages except for buying food, or stealing it when possible. Batraj’s energy was, as ever, unquenchable, and after the first day, he was even good-humoured again.
‘You had never thought to see so much of India, Laura,’ he smiled. ‘Is it not a fabulous country? But you have seen nothing as yet.’
Laura had to agree that it was a fabulous country, even if only because of its size. The way Company officials, including her own father, had spoken of Company conquests, had rather encouraged her to think that Delhi and Agra might be a couple of marches from Bombay or Calcutta.
Now she looked at range after range of hills; at valley after valley under wheat; at herds of cattle grazing contentedly, and flocks of sheep waiting to be slaughtered.
‘This place is called Malwa,’ Batraj told her. ‘It is the most fertile part of Hindustan.’
Now that he judged himself to be well ahead of any possible pursuit, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself.
As the march continued, Laura’s saris began to disintegrate.
At the same time her complexion began to redden and peel, and her hair lay undressed in a tangled golden mess on her shoulders and down her back. Her feet blistered and then hardened again, for before long she was as barefoot as Miljah, and as dusty; she was determined to preserve one garment for when they reached Agra, and took to wearing simply a dhoti, like Milkah and the other women. Her breasts and shoulders were exposed to the sun and started to burn, but this seemed unimportant.
But her collapse as Rani seemed to make no difference to Batraj’s desire for her.
‘What will we do when I become pregnant?’ she asked. ‘Continue as before. Indian women do not stop their labours because they are pregnant.’
‘I am not an Indian,’ she shouted.
He laughed. ‘I am making you into one, my dear Laura.’
Then she hated him.
The eight women in the little party — for in addition to the men, Vijay had brought his favourite, Nanja — shared the cooking, and in true Indian fashion, waited on their men. Laura did her share, for gone were the heady days when she had been reared as queen. She found she enjoyed the work. She had helped her mother with the cooking in Bombay as a girl, and could make as good a curry as any Indian; she liked the companionship of the other women too.
Yet often enough she lay awake in the small hours, and nearly wept with despair as she wondered what was going to become of her and little Sivitraj. Batraj might have the most exotic dreams, but she knew none of them would ever come true: the Company was simply too strong for him.
Even so she contemplated the rest of her life with horror. She had committed herself entirely to a bloodthirsty murderer. That he could also be a charming and irresistible lover only increased her self-loathing. She was not quite twenty-one years old, and she was doomed to spend the rest of her days at this man’s side. Only in the prospect of Sivitraj growing to manhood and rescuing her or avenging her could she find a spark of hope for the future — and that future was a very long way away.
*
‘There!’ Batraj pointed to a brilliant light in the distance.
‘Is it a fire?’
He grinned. ‘It is the morning sun reflecting from the walls of the Taj Mahal.’
As they descended into the valley of the Jumna they approached first the abandoned city of Fatehpour Sikri, which Akbar had built for his favourite wife, the Rajput Princess Jodha Bai. The spectacular buildings and magnificent palaces were mostly deserted, for Akbar had turned his back on the city forever when his queen had died.
Then they came to the Taj Mahal, and Laura gazed in wonder at the marvellous tomb, erected nearly two hundred years before by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, the Light of the Palace. The tomb itself, an immense dome with four high, exquisitely tall minarets, one at each corner, and the formal gardens, was an architectural wonder. It was the opalescent and many-faceted marble that caught and reflected the sun’s rays.
They stopped by a stream to bathe and dress themselves properly. Laura put on her white sari and her jewellery, and Batraj his yellow and blue uniform as an officer in the Sittapore army. Laura could do nothing about her ruined complexion, so she kept a fold of the sari across her face as they rode towards the city.
The armed guards bowed when told that the Rajah of Sittapore and his mother wished an audience with the Begum Sombre, even if they looked somewhat surprised that so illustrious a personage should arrive with so small an entourage.
They were admitted within the walls, and Laura found herself in a teeming, bustling community which quite reduced Bombay to the status of a village. Here, too, there were architectural gems to be admired, in particular the red sandstone Lal Qila which occupied the centre of the city. Inside this palace there was a splendid mosque of white marble which, Batraj told Laura, had been erected by Akbar himself; the Emperor’s tomb was not far distant, outside the city.
They were admitted in
to an inner courtyard, where a chamberlain received them. Here was far greater splendour than Laura had known at Sittapore, although there was also some evidence of decay. It was almost uncanny to think that the legendary Mumtaz Mahal, or her even more famous aunt Nur Jahan, might have stood in this very spot, or that Akbar the Great might have strode by on his way to war.
She shivered. What sort of reception would they receive from the equally legendary Begum Sombre?
The chamberlain beckoned, and Laura went forward. Vijay and the remainder of the party waited in the courtyard, but Batraj accompanied Laura, and they were followed by Miljah, who carried the little Rajah.
They were escorted through richly decorated marble halls, past armed guards who stood to attention, and thence into a reception chamber which was the biggest Laura had ever seen.
The room was filled with richly dressed men and women, but devoid of furniture save for a single highbacked chair in the centre, and in this chair sat the Begum Sombre.
The Begum, Laura calculated from what Batraj had told her, must be not less than seventy-five years old. She saw a tiny figure, glad in a cloth-of-gold sari, her fingers covered in huge ruby rings. Her complexion was pale. As Laura approached, she saw that the signs of age were very evident; blue veins stood out on the Begum’s hands, and wrinkles fled away from her eyes and mouth, and marked her neck. Yet she realised that she was still looking at a remarkably beautiful woman. The small features remained exquisitely fashioned, the green eyes continued to sparkle, the teeth were white and even.
‘The Rani of Sittapore,’ she said, in accented but good English. ‘I had heard that Rajah Sivitraj had taken a very beautiful woman to wife. Come closer, child.’
Laura went right up to the chair, and the two woman gazed at each other.
‘Will you not show me your face?’ the Begum asked.
Laura hesitated, then let the fold of silk drop.
‘You have been over-exposed to the sun,’ the Begum agreed. ‘But true beauty can never be destroyed. I was exposed to the sun once, for three days, bound to the burning barrel of a cannon...’ just for a moment her face hardened and became almost frightening, as she remembered the outrage. Then she smiled. ‘But the men who did that to me are all dead. And I am alive. And still beautiful. Your complexion will recover, child, as did mine. And now I am told your husband is dead. Can this be true?’
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