The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP. I THOUGHT OF OLIVIA, A WEAK WOMAN looking for romance, and her soldier, a man so low he would run from the woman he had just finished jiggling, rather than risk being caught. I thought of Trupti, being sent back to Delhi in disgrace, her days as an ayah—or working for the English in any capacity—over. I thought of the look in Malti’s eyes as she told me about her sister, the way her eyebrows had risen in the hope that I could somehow intervene. But mostly I thought of the Pathan and his proud struggle with the soldiers. I thought of his death here, in this town created for our pleasure, and how his family might never know what had become of him.

  As I lay there, my mind racing, there was a soft knock on my door. I sat up. “Yes?” I whispered, in case Malti was asleep, although from the sound of her tossing on her pallet I doubted it. The door opened, and Faith stood in the moonlight in her nightdress, her arms wrapped around her.

  “Linny? Did I wake you?”

  “No. I couldn’t sleep. Are you ill?”

  “No. But I—but I need to talk to you.” She came to the edge of the bed, and I saw the glint of tears on her face.

  “You’re cold. Come. Get under the covers.” I put Neel on the floor, and he padded over to Malti’s pallet and curled up there.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Faith said, her face registering shock, and I realized she had probably never shared a bed with anyone but Charles.

  “It’s all right, really. There’s lots of room.” She looked tiny and frail, her red hair a tangle on her white cambric nightdress.

  She sat down, her back to me. “I’ll just sit here. I don’t want to look at you when I tell you this.”

  I waited.

  “It’s about what Mrs. Partridge was saying this evening,” she said.

  “It was very rude of her, Faith. I’m so sorry. She’s a blunt, thoughtless woman.”

  “I’m frightened, Linny.”

  “Frightened? Of what?” I could see her shoulders trembling through the thin nightdress.

  “I’m carrying a child, Linny,” she said then.

  I moved closer to her. Relief flooded through me. This, then, was the problem, was the reason for Faith’s inertia, her lack of interest, her troubling vagueness. “But that’s wonderful, isn’t it? Charles loves you, and—”

  “We said we wouldn’t have any children. We agreed it would be unfair to a child. They say the next generation is always born black, Linny. And I still hoped to reunite with my family. I was sure if I took Charles home, even once, and they met him properly—my father refused any contact with him in Calcutta—they would see the same things I see in him, and would relent. But if there were a child, a dark child, Linny . . .” Faith’s head shook slowly. “No. Charles even took me to an Indian woman, Nani Meera—I believe she’s his aunt or a distant relative of some sort. He explained, and she gave me . . . things. To use—before, and after—to stop a baby from starting. She’s a midwife.”

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.

  “But they didn’t work,” she whispered needlessly.

  “Surely Charles is pleased, though, after all. And perhaps the child . . .” I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “There is no perhaps, Linny. Charles doesn’t know. I hoped that I would lose it on the trip here, and he would have never known.” She put her face in her hands. “I’ve tried not to think about it, tried to pretend it isn’t happening. But tonight, when Mrs. Partridge went on about the horror of a black baba . . .” She wept. “There is no point in anything anymore, Linny. No point. My life at home was meaningless, and my life here feels no better.”

  I pulled her down beside me, and although she wouldn’t turn to face me, she let me put my arms around her. Her bones felt like those of a bird, and her hair smelled of jasmine. I hadn’t slept with my arms around anyone since my mother had died, although of course I had crowded with the others on the dank mattress on Jack Street. But how different it was to share a bed with Faith, here, in comparison to those other girls, with their smells of cheap powder and sweat and semen, in a room rank with damp mold and cold ashes and greasy clothes.

  “Meaningless? How can you say that? You have Charles, and now—”

  “Don’t speak of it, Linny. I can’t bear to think. I can’t bear to think about anything anymore.”

  I stayed quiet. I breathed in the scent of Faith’s hair, comforted by her warmth and closeness, and felt myself finally spiraling toward sleep.

  I AWOKE BEFORE FAITH and Mrs. Partridge in the morning. I had fabricated my own plans and lies while lying in bed in the early morning light. First of all I called Malti and told her that when we returned to Calcutta her sister could come to our house and work there, that no matter what Sahib Ingram said I would make it so. Malti kissed my hands and then my feet, much to my discomfort. “Go and find her, and tell her we’ll retrieve her on our way back, past Delhi,” I said, not wanting Malti to see where I was off to. As soon as she was gone I dressed and hurried through the quiet town, all the way to the windowless hovel on the outskirts.

  As I approached I saw a soldier slouching against the wall, but as soon as he saw me he stood at attention beside the open door, which looked surprisingly heavy. Through the opening I could see a damp dirt floor and a pile of old straw. And I also saw a foot in a high black boot.

  “Ma’am? M . . . May I help you?” the soldier asked, stuttering slightly, as if nervous. “This is a temporary jail, and no place for a lady.” There was a tin plate of half-eaten food on the ground beside him. I wondered if the prisoner was being fed.

  “I do mean to be here,” I said. Then I told him my name, and that my conscience had been playing up all night, that it wasn’t my affair, but as a Christian I felt it my duty to tell the truth. These lies came to me easily; my whole life was a lie. It was only when I was forced to be truthful that I stumbled. I went on to tell the soldier that I had been in the market at the very time that Mrs. Hathaway was brutally defiled, and had seen the Pathan there. Then I had seen him ride off in the opposite direction of the picnic grounds. “Where was he found?” I asked.

  The soldier didn’t answer immediately, and that gave me courage.

  “It was on the other side of Simla, wasn’t it? Because as I told you, I saw him nowhere near Annandale. He was going off toward the western hills.”

  Now a shadow passed over the soldier’s face. “Why is it, Mrs.—Ingot, did you say? Why is it that you care what happens to this bas—pardon me, ma’am, to this filthy Arab?”

  “Ingram,” I said, standing as tall as I could. “Mrs. Somers Ingram, of Calcutta. My husband is with the convenanted civil service. Although my heart does indeed go out to poor Mrs. Hathaway, there are, you must admit, a number of black horses in this vicinity. Did she say specifically it was a Pathan?”

  The soldier looked even more uncomfortable. “Mrs. Ingram. Ma’am,” he said. “I’m only in Simla on leave. I have been asked to stand guard here, although not in an official capacity.” He was very young, with a pale downiness over his top lip. In all probability he was only a year or two younger than I, but I had purposely dressed in a suit of navy silk, a dark blue bonnet whose navy ribbons ended with white egret tips, and black kid gloves. I kept my chin raised and spoke to him with my eyelids lowered.

  “And who is your superior, then? To whom may I speak about this matter?”

  “That would be Major Bonnycastle, ma’am. But he’s not here; as I’ve explained, we’re not here in a military sense, ma’am. There’s never been any need for that in Simla before now.”

  I glanced at the open door again. There was the clink of a chain, and the boot was no longer visible. “And so the Pathan will remain here until a commanding officer arrives?”

  The soldier looked even more uncomfortable, blinking rapidly. “I don’t believe so, ma’am.”

  “Then what would you do with him?”

  The young man’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny neck. “Plea
se, Mrs. Ingram. This is not a matter for you to concern yourself about. He will be taken care of by those of us here, and none of the ladies will have anything to fear from the likes of him ever again. Now I must ask you to leave. This is no place for a lady.” And as if to prove his point, at that moment an aggressive black crow flew onto the roof of the hovel with a great coarse flapping. It opened its metallic beak and tilted its head, looking down at the plate. Then it let out a gasping croak and swooped low, grabbing a meat-covered bone in its menacing beak. Carrying it triumphantly, it flew over the head of the black horse, who shied, its flanks quivering.

  I TRIED TO TELL MYSELF I had done all I could for the moment. I didn’t like to think that the soldiers would simply take matters into their own hands and hang the Pathan, but the young man’s blinking uncertainty had not been encouraging. Surely Olivia would never retract her story, or admit the horse wasn’t black after all, but brown or gray, that it hadn’t necessarily been a Pathan. I doubted she would say anything more, and she would never be questioned further.

  Faith was sitting in the back garden when I arrived. She was clutching a sodden handkerchief, but I saw a new glow around her. There was something different in her expression that cheered me, although she was desperately pale. Mrs. Partridge had commented on Faith’s pallor only a few days before, asking her if she’d been eating clay for the purpose of whitening her complexion.

  Neel lay on the grass at Faith’s feet, beside a pile of her books. The sight of the books encouraged me further.

  “You’re looking better, Faith,” I said, truthfully, in spite of her paleness. “You mustn’t worry about the baby. No matter what, you know you have Charles and his love.”

  “Yes,” she said, studying Neel. “Yes. I do believe, now, that everything will turn out for the best.”

  I smiled at her. “Oh, Faith. I am terribly glad to hear you say that. I’ve been so worried about you.”

  She finally looked into my face. “I want you to have these books, Linny,” she said, touching the leaning stack with the toe of her slipper.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I shan’t read them. You love books. You take them.”

  “I couldn’t, Faith. Of course you’ll read them. Come on, come for a ride with me.” I stood and held my hand toward her.

  “I don’t feel like riding, Linny. I have a number of things to do.”

  What could she possibly have to do? “Please, Faith. We’ll take tiffin with us, and I know a place we can go. I have a map.”

  “Not today.”

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  She was silent, but finally smiled. I realized I hadn’t seen her smile for a long time. It looked unnatural, more of a rictus. “Can we ride far, Linny? Into the mountains?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “All right, then. Tomorrow.”

  “I promise you, Faith, we’ll have a lovely, lovely time.”

  THAT NIGHT I DECIDED that when Faith and I returned from our ride I would again go to the jail. Perhaps there would be a different soldier on duty, and I would plead my case to him. I felt a tiny surge of hopefulness about Faith and the slight enthusiasm she had shown when she talked about riding far into the mountains. Perhaps everything really was going to be all right for her, after all.

  WE WOKE JUST AFTER DAWN. I left Neel with Malti and went out to the kitchen. Dilip was waiting for me, clutching a woven basket with leather straps. A warm wheat fragrance filled the hut. He must have been up in the middle of the night to make fresh chapatis.

  “I told you it didn’t have to be anything special, Dilip. Just some cheese and fruit would have been fine.”

  He tucked back his chin as if insulted, holding out the basket. I looked inside and saw the chapatis, saffron rice, a jar of melon and ginger jam, and a container of goat cheese with mushrooms.

  I thanked him once, knowing he grew annoyed if I said too much. And then I fetched Faith and we walked up the hard-packed road to the Mall. The morning was beautiful, its stillness broken only by the shrill cry of a lone black-and-white hoopoe.

  Because it was so early, the only person at the stables was the syce, wearing a threadbare tweed jacket over his long white dhoti. He had been squatting under a leafy tamarind but jumped up when he saw us and led out two ponies, flowers woven into their manes. He tightened their saddles and I tied the basket on the side of my pony, Uta, a pretty brown filly with white spots. Faith’s was a gray colt, Rami.

  We led the thick-haired ponies toward the outskirts of town, and once we were on our way, I pulled a wrinkled scrap of paper out of my sleeve.

  “What’s that?” Faith asked. She appeared composed, calm. The tightness of her features had relaxed. I marveled at the change that had come over her in a few days.

  “It’s a map. A boy I know—Merkeet—who works in the spice bazaar drew it for me. I talk to him every time I buy food. Once, when I admired a hill woman’s burka, he told me that the women made beautiful beaded ones in Ludhiana, and they would sell them. Ludhiana, he claims, isn’t far at all. I thought we could go and visit it, then have our tiffin and ride back.” I studied the paper. “It looks like we follow this main ridge until we come to a stream.”

  Faith spread her yellow skirt neatly over her knees on the leather sidesaddle. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes—look. Here are the Himalayas, this is the road back down to the river. We can’t go wrong.” I felt similar to the way I had the time Faith and I had slipped away from Mrs. Waterton in the Maidan and ventured through the bazaar. This time we were to be away from the stern face of Mrs. Partridge, free to explore. To gallop and not care that our skirts blew up or our hair was tangled. Free to laugh out loud or to sing into the wind.

  BUT AFTER WHAT FELT like close to two hours, I began to doubt Merkeet’s cartography skills. We had followed the ridge to a shallow stream, then let the ponies amble through the pebbly water until thick copses of trees on either side reached in closer and closer. Overhead, the sun grew warmer. Faith hadn’t spoken since we’d left Simla.

  “I have a feeling that we’ll see Ludhiana just around the next bend,” I called back, not yet willing to admit that I may have made a mistake in going so far from Simla.

  But the stream only trickled to a damp gully after the next turn, and with nowhere else to go, I steered Uta up into a narrow opening that I hoped was a path. We had to push thick scratchy branches away from our faces as the horses plodded along. And then, with no warning, we broke out into a daisy-covered field.

  “It’s beautiful,” I shouted, gazing at the wide clearing. Trees enclosed the field on either side, but on one end it dipped down too low to be able to see where it led. The other end was edged with a jumbled pile of huge rocks. “Let’s stop here and eat,” I said to Faith, as she trotted up beside me on Rami. “And then I suppose we’ll follow the stream back, for I don’t think we’ll find Ludhiana after all.”

  “All right,” Faith said, staring at the rocks. “You set out the food. I’m just going to have a look around.”

  “Uta loves the daisies,” I called as she left, but Faith didn’t answer, urging Rami toward the rocky end of the field. I unpacked the food while my spotted pony snuffled happily, pulling up bunches of the flowers and munching them loudly. Faith rode back and sat beside me while I ate. It was windy in the field.

  “Please, Faith, try to eat a little. You must,” I begged.

  She took a chapati, but I saw that she only crumbled it into smaller and smaller pieces, distractedly making a small nest of it on the ground beside her. The wind lifted her skirt in a golden circle about her; her bonnet had become untied and slipped back, and her hair was tossed in all directions. She occasionally glanced toward the rocks.

  “What’s beyond them?” I asked, wondering at her fascination.

  “Nothing. There’s a sheer drop over the edge. Nothing at all,” she repeated.

  I shrugged and lay back in the sweet-smelling flowers, looking at the blue sky and listening to t
he steady tearing rasp of the grazing horses. I felt a slight tremor under me, and as I sat up to ask Faith if she had felt it, a high whinny broke the stillness. It was Uta. She bolted toward the rocks at the far end of the field. Rami trotted anxiously in a small circle.

  “Uta!” I shouted, jumping up. Faith had grabbed Rami’s reins, and pulled herself into the saddle. “What’s scaring them?” I called to her.

  But Faith took off, first at just a trot, but then the pony was galloping. She lost her bonnet; it swirled in an updraft and disappeared.

  Something made me turn away from the puzzling vision of her, galloping toward the rocks. A man on a horse rode up the field from the dip of the valley on the far end. The ground shook with the heavy pounding of hooves. He stood in his stirrups every few seconds to look behind him. In a shock of recognition I realized it was the Pathan. I looked back to Faith, her skirt billowing out behind like a ship’s sail.

  I was in the middle. The Pathan rode toward me, Faith away. Uta veered suddenly—was it because of the sudden ringing explosions somewhere behind me?—but Faith didn’t follow. Instead, she rose in her saddle in a parody of what I’d just seen the Pathan do. But Faith did not look behind. She appeared fixed in a straight line, heading toward the rocks she had ridden out to earlier. And then she urged Rami on with her crop. Rami tried to turn aside as they neared the rock outcropping, but Faith must have held his lead. I saw her, saw her forcing him toward the outcrop. I didn’t understand. And then she let go of the reins—I saw them drop as she raised her hands in the air, and Rami tried to stop before the edge of the outcrop, skidding, tipping sideways, and Faith went over his head in a graceful arc as if pushed by an unseen hand. But she hadn’t been pushed. She had thrown herself from the saddle. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I’d just witnessed. Faith had flung herself over the rocks.