by Peg Kingman
The fire was burning well, considering how wet everything was. This camp was in a sandy clearing not far from the vast Brahmaputra, on a spit of land at a confluence where a smaller tributary tumbled down from the hills. Tall thickets of elephant grass and bamboos, twice as high as a man, stood like walls around the clearing. There were no villages of any size nearby. The footprints of a large tiger had been seen in the mud at the river’s edge, and the uneasy guards drew in a little closer to the fire as evening fell, for tigers were sometimes amazingly bold.
Teerut’s servants had set up another canopy for him and his uncle on the opposite side of the fire, and a comfortable place had been made for the musicians as well; so there were three little pavilions arranged around the fire.
“I’d rather midges any day,” said Grace to Catherine, slapping at a mosquito.
“They mean no harm—only kissing you,” said Sharada. “Come, Miss Grace, will you play tanpura for us? Go fetch it, pray; it is in my big brass-bound chest in the tent.” Grace did as she was bidden.
Someone had set out several bowls of betel nuts to make paan later, when the time should arrive for refreshments; and had strewn flowers all over the mats in each of the pavilions. The flowers were orchids, Catherine noticed, the exquisite spotted orchids which trailed in extravagant cascades all through the towering trees gracing the banks of this vast river. There was a generous scattering of the crimson flowers which littered the ground under every tall silk-cotton tree, too. On impulse Catherine tucked a cluster of small pale violet orchids into the ribbon at her bodice. Incense burned in brass braziers set all about, sending up thin scented plumes of smoke to discourage the mosquitoes. The smoke mingled with the thick-bodied mist, which lifted and drifted and descended at random.
The musicians settled themselves. Prince Teerut sat opposite, with his venerable uncle, the Syiem. Mrs Babcock settled onto her cushion on the other side of Anibaddh with baby Constantia in her arms. The musicians tuned their instruments painstakingly, taking their time. They had all the time in the world.
Grace seemed perfectly at home among them as Sharada helped her tune the tanpura. Then they began to play. Sharada’s taus had a most beautiful voice, its tone celestial, thought Catherine. Not woody or reedy like an Italian violin, but more like an exquisite ringing human voice, thanks perhaps to its metal strings. How would a harp sound if its strings were bowed, not plucked? What would Hector have made of this sound? She let herself be carried upon this music, letting it hold her up—as the broad river carried their boats each day. Watching Sharada’s hands at play, she let herself think of Mr Fleming. His hands. The square, broad nails of his fingers. The shape of his knuckles. His hands, that first time he had given her tea aboard Increase so long ago, holding the kettle, tipping it, pouring steaming water into the little Chinese teacups and the teapot, overflowing them. Water, overflowing. Music, overflowing. Rivers, boats, cups, petals, water, hands….
Prince Teerut sent a servant with a tray of refreshments to the ladies’ pavilion: a little flask of rice wine and several onyx cups. The servant, a handsome boy, bowed low, then knelt before Anibaddh to serve her. He poured wine into one small cup and offered it to her. Anibaddh took it and drank the wine, slowly, with her eyes closed. Then she looked across the smoky fire and, meeting her prince’s eyes, she smiled bashfully. She put her hands together over her heart in the Indian gesture of namaste, as Sharada had taught her, and bowed to him. He returned the namaste, and Catherine thought (though it was hard to tell, for the heat of the fire between them distorted him, made waves of him) that he, too, smiled. The handsome boy then filled the other two cups for Catherine and Mrs Babcock, and went away again. The rice wine tasted of yeast. The onyx cup was polished smooth, pleasant against the lip, and a delightful shape and weight in the hand.
“I wish I had something tasty to send back across to him,” whispered Anibaddh to Catherine. “Don’t we have any little thing at all from us womenfolk?”
Catherine thought. Then she whispered, “I have in my trunk some whisky given me by Captain Mainwaring. Would that do?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Do you mind?”
“Not in the least. Shall I bring it on a tray?”
“That’s so kind of you, Mrs MacDonald, ma’am. And you take it across to him? Here, you can use this tray.”
This Catherine did. To be a lady-in-waiting to the Black Queen was an honour, she reminded herself as she washed the little wine flask and the cups at the river. Then she dried them carefully with a clean towel. She opened her trunk, in the dark corner of the ladies’ tent. Here was her canvaswork, beginning to smell rather damp, too. There was the male figure, the man with his spaniel, smiling upon the russet-haired lady who was mounted now upon an elephant. It struck her sharply that the man resembled Mr Fleming. Had he always?
She could hear the music still: Sharada’s lovely open-hearted singing voice. She pushed aside the canvaswork and dug deeper. Here was the bottle of whisky. She held it up, letting the day’s last light from the doorway of the tent shine through it—the colour of amber, the colour of tea. A bottle of home, she thought: home water, home peat, home barley, all distilled down to this concentrate and carried all this long way in this thick glass bottle. She opened it, smelled it. It smelled of Scotland. It smelled of men. The true contraband goût! She filled the little ceramic flask, then put her bottle away. She arranged the flask and cups on the tray, and added the spray of pale orchids from her dress as a grace note.
Sharada’s trunk stood open, too. Grace perhaps had forgotten to close it when she had come for the tanpura. Everything inside was wrapped in lengths of cotton or silk cloth, a jumble of colourful, strangely shaped bundles, alluring in their mystery. Catherine knew that Sharada had musical instruments, and probably some books. And surely, somewhere amidst it all, was that precious portrait of herself and Sandy.
The venerable old Syiem had retired to his tent by the time Catherine returned. Only Teerut and his people remained in his pavilion. Catherine bowed to Prince Teerut, and knelt down (as gracefully as Sharada would have done, she hoped) to set down the tray and pour a dram of whisky into one of the onyx cups. Then she held up the tray, offering it to him. He took the cup, and drained it. She could see that it astonished him and made his eyes water. He cracked a grin in spite of himself, and she smiled back. Here was a man whose sense of dignity did not prevent his laughing, even at himself! This was an excellent quality in a man.
“What is called, memsahib, please?” he asked.
“Whisky,” she told him. “Or rather, uisge baugh. It means the water of life.”
“No, no, memsahib. Yourself the name, please?”
“Oh! I am Catherine MacDonald,” she said. “Sir,” she added, wondering what the proper form of address might be for a Khasi prince. Ought she to say, Your Highness?
“Please you will fill cup again,” he said. “And fill two; you drink with me.” Catherine filled two cups. “Water of Life, memsahib Ka taryng!” he said, and drank it; and Catherine did the same. Mild as mothers’ milk; but it caught at her throat and made her cough just a little.
But suddenly Teerut’s face changed, his dark eyes focusing on something behind Catherine. Catherine turned and saw behind the musicians’ pavilion a rhinoceros not fifty feet off, far too close, an enormous male. It had emerged from the wall of tall grass surrounding their camp. The musicians stilled their instruments, hands laid across strings and resonators. The drifting mist made a pale scrim between them and the sullen, suspicious animal. Its funnel-like ears swiveled, and its heavy head swung ponderously from side to side as if mounted on a hinge. It peered about with small rheumy eyes as it snuffed the air. The guard posted nearest to it silently fitted an arrow to his bow. But an arrow against so armoured a beast would be no more than a mosquito; nor would a well-aimed ball from a rifle have much more effect. The rhino looked nearsighted and foul tempered.
There was only the sound of the river chuckling over its rocks; and the
labored breathing of the rhino. Then it exhaled—a sound like a steam engine venting pressure—suddenly turned on its haunches, and as quick and nimble as a warhorse at the volte it galloped a few steps forward toward the ladies’ tents, their canvas forms looming in the mist. No one breathed. The rhino stopped again, uncertain, and peered about once more, ears swiveling.
Constantia wailed.
The beast’s heavy head swung toward the sound, and again it changed direction and ran a few steps toward them…and stopped. Catherine felt frozen in horror and impotence; mired in nightmarish helplessness.
Then Sharada moved, a fluid movement both quick and slow. In one smooth sweep she laid down her taus and raised the bow before her while fitting something small and dark—a betel nut from the bowl beside her—against its band of horsehair, as though it were a bow for archery, not music. She drew back the string near her eye, and let fly her missile into the tall grass not a dozen feet beyond the rhino. The betel nut whispered into the dense clump, and the sullen brute spun about once more to glare suspiciously at the sound. Quickly Sharada let fly a second nut at the same spot. Then the guards, understanding the tactic, let fly their arrows, too—not at the beast but rustling into the grass behind it—a tempting diversion. The rhino looked about one last time, then, irritably switching its thin whip tail, trotted lightly back into the wall of grass, as it had come. The grasses closed like a curtain behind it, as though it had never been there at all.
THEY REACHED THE city of Gowahati on the thirteenth day, and left it behind on the fourteenth. The women and their trunks and chests, as well as the precious canvas-wrapped long objects and a great quantity of other goods and supplies, were all loaded upon carts and wagons to make their way up to the place where the elephants awaited them, in the hills outside the city. There were eight wagons altogether, and seven of them were drawn by bullocks. But the eighth one, the one which carried the women, was drawn by a horse, an ugly hammer-headed spavined gelding with a clouded blue eye. The driver was a very thin man with a frequent cough, and arms hardly thicker than the frayed reins of the horse’s bridle. Neither man nor horse looked fit for work.
Catherine offered the driver an orange from the supplies which had been loaded onto this wagon with her and the other women, but he frowned and shook his head at her. Catherine took this for a refusal, and wondered whether he considered the orange sullied, polluted by her outcaste touch. She peeled it herself, and shared it with Sharada, who sat beside her. Catherine relished each segment, bursting with sweet delicious juice. She marveled at the towering leafy forest through which the narrow rough track wound, up the flank of a long, steep hillside outside of the city. The vast trees were teak, Sharada told her. A ship’s worth of timber in each tree, or so it appeared to Catherine. A great fleet of ships grew upon this hill.
The horse was not fast, but he was not so slow as the plodding bullocks hitched to the other wagons, and gradually they drew ahead of the others. Catherine could hear Sharada singing quietly to herself, under her breath. Sharada sang all the time, these days. She seemed untroubled by any doubts about anything.
Catherine heard a faint humming, too, a little like the buzzing sympathetic strings of a sitar, a buzzing drone from some unseen source. Then the horse kicked, and the wagon lurched. Grace cried out; and the faint humming erupted into a buzzing swarm of angry hornets—for the horse had stepped squarely upon the opening of their nest in the ground.
The horse kicked several times, shattering the dashboard at the front of the wagon, then burst into a ponderous gallop, urged on by the driver’s whip and shouts, for the man’s bare arms were suddenly studded with angry stinging hornets. The women on the wagon hung on and batted at the insects, but their best defense was to wrap themselves in their shawls.
The hornets did not pursue them very far. The wagon crested a small rise at a tremendous pace, and gradually the hornets fell away behind them. But the horse was at full gallop now, and did not slow even for a bend in the road. The wagon swung perilously to the left, where the ground dropped away steeply into the forest below.
“Stop! Stop!” cried Catherine, and Sharada was shouting something, too, at the driver, who was hauling on the reins, the inadequate sinews of his thin arms standing out. “Tell him to stop the horse!” Catherine cried to Sharada.
“The horse does not stop; the hornets have stung it!” said Sharada. In fact Catherine could see a few hornets still clinging to the horse’s haunches just above and below the breeching; if the horse would sit back against it, the breeching would function as a brake.
“Is there no drag?” cried Catherine. There was a hand lever for the drag brake, but the driver had no hand to spare for it. Anibaddh climbed forward and seized the handle, throwing all her weight onto it, but the wooden brake shoe was worn to nothing and only clattered uselessly against the rim of the wheel.
The track steepened here, still downhill, then disappeared ahead, around another right turn. The ground fell away steeply to the left; to the right it rose in a solid rock wall. The driver was now sawing at the reins with all his strength, but the horse threw up his head and showed no inclination to slow. Then the frayed right rein snapped. The horse’s head bent hard around to the left, unbalanced by the remaining left rein, and he lurched perilously. Which was the horse’s blind eye? Catherine could not to remember. Ahead, the right turn was much closer now. At this speed, could they make that turn? Could the horse see it? What lay beyond?
The horse stumbled, and for a moment Catherine was sure he would fall. But somehow he recovered himself, getting his legs under him again, staggering. Certainly he lacked the strength now to stop the heavy wagon.
Catherine saw Grace’s pale, horrified face. Grace had suffered this before. This could not be permitted to happen again. Not this.
“Your pistol!” Catherine shouted, seizing Sharada by the arm.
“What? What?”
“Your pistol! Give it to me!” cried Catherine, shaking her, and Sharada hiked up her skirt to her thighs, modesty forgotten. There was the ugly heavy gun, snugged safe in a cloth pocket gartered against her leg. “It is loaded, with proper powder and ball,” Sharada said, tearing it free and handing it to Catherine, “I think.”
“I pray that it is,” whispered Catherine to herself. With the heavy pistol in her left hand, she scrambled forward, up onto the driver’s seat, then forward more, till she was lying against the shattered dashboard. Sharada clung to her legs to keep her from pitching out. The horse’s tail lashed her face, and its sweating straining hindquarters and hind legs flashed before her, below her.
“No! no!” cried the driver, seeing what she held, and she felt him plucking at her shoulder, or perhaps weakly kicking at her. Where should she aim? The brute’s head? Too far away, and moving too rapidly; what if she should miss her one shot? She leaned to the left—oh, the open air there, open space, and a deep fall!—as far as she dared. Holding the pistol in both hands at arm’s length, she aimed behind the horse’s shoulder, forward into the meager heaving ribs just behind the left foreleg, six feet away. She squeezed the trigger.
A red hole erupted in the horse’s sweat-streaked hide, and the blast of the pistol knocked her braced arms awry. The poor beast went crashing down, heavy and helpless as a felled tree: knees, head, neck, chest all entangled in reins and harness, collar and traces. The wagon shafts fractured like bones. The wagon slid, skidded, spun around to the right, around the sudden dragging weight of the shattered horse—the right rear wheel collapsed but the others held—and came to a hard stop not an arm’s span from the lip of the dropoff.
Oh, triumph! Oh, exultation!
Oh, most exquisite revenge! For an instant—as Catherine lay against the dashboard of the wagon still holding the pistol—the broken brute dying in the red dirt was instead that wicked beautiful chestnut mare, the one with the gait of the doe on the hill, the one to blame for all her griefs. Then Grace leapt upon Catherine and embraced her, sobbing. Catherine burst into
tears, too, while the driver burst into laments and curses.
Prince Teerut paid the driver a considerable indemnity for his horse, far more than it had ever been worth. He also tried to make Catherine accept a reward for her heroism in saving his bride, but this she refused. From then on, instead of calling her memsahib Ka taryng, he called her memsahib Ka ryngkap, meaning Lady of the Silver Quiver of Silver Arrows.
Prince Teerut seemed to enjoy Catherine’s company, and he liked to practice speaking English with her. He also enjoyed uisge baugh. One evening in camp along their route through the high hills, Prince Teerut and Anibaddh and Catherine sat together talking and sipping a little of Catherine’s remaining whisky. Grace sat nearby, too. On the evenings when she wasn’t needed to play tanpura with the other musicians, she often whittled. She carved little figures, human and animal, from the curiously gnarled sticks that she picked up.
“It is from your land faraway, this water of life, memsahib Ka ryngkap?” asked Prince Teerut.
“Yes, sir, from Scotland,” said Catherine.
“Scot-land, Scot-land. A man from Scot-land is in our hills, in our Hima. He has taught me to speak the excellent English. I speak the excellent English, aye?”
“Oh, aye, sir, excellent, indeed. Pray, who is this man from Scotland?”
“Friend to my uncle is the Scot-land man.”
“Your uncle, the Hima Syiem?” asked Catherine, nodding toward the old man’s tent.
“No, my other uncle; my mother’s younger brother brought the Scot-land man here,” said Teerut.
“What is his name, this Scot? Is he here still?”