Nightrunners of Bengal (25 page)

One day, one hour, at a time. He’d die if he didn’t sleep soon and obliterate the memories. He looked across the level
and saw the blue smudges of village cooking fires. Beyond them the plain lay under a pall of smoke touched by the silver glint of the river. Here, in the quiet edge of the jungle, shrieks dinned in his ears, he heard trumpets and bugles and marching men, and smelled blood. He lay down beside his son and stared up through the branches at the leaden sky.

H
E KNEW he had not slept long—or had he been unconscious, open-eyed?—but could not for a time realize where he was, or why he came to be here. He lay on his back under a tree in the heat of noon, and saw that he was wearing white uniform trousers—could it be manoeuvres? A sepoy’s shako was near his hand, and the place smelled of hot rock and dried leaves. Then he saw Robin and still could not shut his eyes. He was alone with Robin and they had no food. His eye caught a glint of metal nearby. He jerked upright, the pistol in his hand and his teeth bared.

Nestling among the roots of the next tree were two pots full of milk, a plate heaped with rice, a bowl of vegetable curry, and five mangoes on a big dark leaf. The vessels were of chased brass, and the sun shone brightly on them. His tongue swelled and saliva flowed under it and dribbled down his chin. He saw feet near the pots—two brown and hard, two white and bleeding—and raised his eyes higher.

To the left, Piroo the carpenter squatted on his heels above the food; he was mixing something in a brass bowl over a tiny fire. Caroline Langford sat farther away, to the right, leaning against a tree; she was wearing a cheap sari; her face was calm and exhausted and her eyes shut.

Piroo looked up. “Put down the pistol, sahib. It’s not loaded anyway. There is much to do if you are all to escape alive.”

Rodney nodded vaguely. That made sense. Piroo had an air of quiet authority—of course, he owned land here. Rod
ney giggled as the carpenter carried food and drink to his side—the little rat might have poisoned it. He loaded the pistol, his hands shaking, and when it was done took a wary sip of the milk.

Caroline opened her eyes. He watched her swim up from a black deep, as he had done, and realize why her feet were torn. He watched her fingers tighten while she fought down a rush of panic; then her mouth was calm again, and her eyes steady. She smiled a little, stretched, and walked over to Robin. Blood stained the stones where she put her feet; Rodney kept on sipping.

Robin’s breath came in fluttering whispers and there were purple hollows under his eyes. She took off his nightdress, spread it on the earth, and stretched him out face down on it. She took the child’s left wrist and drew a sharp stone across the vein. The light blood flowed evenly, at first in a trickle, soon more strongly. Rodney held the pistol in his wavering right hand and glared at Caroline over the muzzle; with his left hand he continued to stuff food into his mouth. No one should hurt Robin, no one; he would trust no one. One false move …

Caroline did not look up. She watched the blood run for a minute or two, then pressed with one thumb to stop the flow. Piroo gave her the bowl he had been stirring, and she dabbed steamy paste from it on the cut; with fingers and teeth she ripped a piece off the nightdress and made a tourniquet. Piroo said, “The head too. It’s good stuff.” Caroline hesitated, looked again into the bowl, and then, without cleaning off the clotted blood, slapped paste thick over the wound on Robin’s head.

The boy’s cheeks had sunk, and after the bleeding his face was green-white. She sat him up in her lap and held a jar of milk ready in her right hand. He stirred and moaned, but when she trickled milk between his teeth he swallowed it. She did it again, and in ten minutes he had drunk a quarter of a pint. When he vomited the milk over her knee and coughed weakly, she waited a minute and began to feed him
again. When the little jar was empty she put it down and held him cradled in her arms. A long time passed and he did not vomit. With her feet she pushed herself to the tree, leaned back against it, and looked up into the muzzle of the pistol.

He had forgotten it was in his hand, for he had been studying a new softness in her face as she worked. He lowered the pistol, keeping his eyes on her, and felt over the plates with his free hand—all gone, he’d eaten everything. The mango stones lay around him, chewed clean, and his mouth was full of the last piece of fruit. Caroline was giving Robin to Piroo. His mind fumbled at a curtain; reality was on the other side, but it would be too harsh there, on the other side, and he was glad he could not get through. He tried to stare her down. He couldn’t; let her fight.

“Lie down.”

He whimpered as she eased his eyelids down and spread paste over his face. It was hot, and smelled earthy, of worms and herbs. He writhed and clenched his teeth, but it cooled quickly and set to the consistency of dough. The jabbing needles shimmered away into a ventral ache that wrinkled his skin. She eased the tunic off his shoulders and opened his trousers and pulled them down round his ankles. He shook his head and mumbled, “Only the burns. Nothing else wrong.”

The edges of darkness crept round him. Oh, God, they had put something in the food. God, God, God. They had lulled him and drugged him. She wanted to kill Robin. She was jealous. Joanna had said so. He stared up at the weary face and could not move. Loose strands of her hair brushed his forehead. She wore a sari; she was an Indian in disguise; she’d planned it all. He strained to reach the pistol, but he could not move. Tepid lead filled his veins and weighted his muscles. His eyes would not stay—would not stay open….

He awoke silently to full consciousness, and knew this time where he was and what had happened. It was dark; the
sky twinkled with stars, and the moon hung low—east or west? He looked at the stars again. East. May the tenth, moon two days past full, rising; it must be early in the night He had to kill someone. His pistol was gone and he sat up trembling. Caroline’s voice was low and strong in the darkness near him. “Are you ready to move now?”

The sari framed her face, and the moonlight painted it with calm so that it was beautiful. She was in her old position, her back against the tree, and Robin slept in her arms. Piroo stood beyond her; beyond him again there was something big and white among the tree trunks. Rodney recognized the shape of a two-wheeled bullock cart fitted with a low-domed canvas roof. Two white bullocks stood in the yoke and blew through their nostrils. The boughs creaked and a small breeze stirred his hair.

He said, “I want my pistol.”

Piroo gave him the pistol and he tucked it into his belt Caroline tried to stand up, clinging one-handed to the tree until the strength came back into her legs. She must have sat there through the crawling hours of the afternoon heat, and never moved. She lifted Robin into the cart, and Rodney followed. Blankets, felt rugs, and a litter of pots and sacks covered the rough floor. She laid Robin along one side, and sat at his head; Rodney curled up on the other side.

Piroo fastened the canvas flaps front and back and whispered in through a tiny crack, “You can look through here, sahib, but don’t shoot until I say so—on no account.”

The frame creaked as Piroo took his place, squatting in the open on the back end of the shaft. They heard him prod the bullocks’ haunches with the goad. The cart heaved and settled back, heaved again, rode heavily over a tree root, and began to groan and squeak through the jungle.

After an hour it dropped into a rutted track, turned left, and moved faster down a forest alley.

The night passed. Rodney dozed twice for short periods and each time awoke in frantic terror. He must have cried out, for Caroline had put her hand across and was holding
his arm. Each time he stilled the trembling and shrugged her off. Twice he heard Robin whimper, and after it Caroline’s soothing murmur. In the dawn she passed him a mango, and he lay chewing it and watching Robin. The boy’s eyes opened to stare up at the canvas, where the light filtered through and made the dust a cold dancing fog. The eyes were blank; shivering. Rodney scrambled over, kissed his son’s cheek, and muttered incoherently in his ear. The child’s blue lips stirred, then he closed his eyes and went to sleep again.

The cart turned off the track and passed through uneven rock-strewn jungle. After a while it stopped, and Piroo opened up the flaps. They climbed stiffly out into a clearing, where the rocks of a dried stream bed held a pool of black water. Piroo unyoked the bullocks, and propped up the shaft by turning the yoke bar through a right angle and jamming one end of it into the earth. The bullocks lay down where they were, and he flung them a few handfuls of chopped straw. Then he crept under the cart without a word, lay down, and in a minute was asleep.

The air was hot and fresh, and there was no dust. Caroline brought out a blanket and put Robin down on it; Rodney listened to the sounds of the jungle awakening. Twigs snapped a long way off, a deer called, voiceless birds stepped through the leaves. He did not want to know anything more; he would go to sleep.

He heard her speaking. “Piroo knew something bad was going to happen. But he didn’t know what. He says he tried to make you come away, but what could he say? Even if he’d known everything, no one would have believed him.”

Rodney grunted. Believe Piroo, if he’d announced on Saturday that the world was coming to an end? He didn’t believe it now, on Monday. It hadn’t happened.

The girl’s voice pressed him, pleading. “We have to get well, and fight for ourselves. We owe it to Piroo; he’s risking his life. He picked me up in the fields, found a sari for me.
I tried to get to Isobel at the van Steengaards’. I tried to get to you. There were fires everywhere and——” Her voice trembled. “A goatherd from Devra told us where you were. We
must
fight, for Robin’s sake.”

He grunted again, shut his eyes and ears, and burrowed down into sleep.

A thin waft of smoke, sharp in his nostrils, roused him to the familiar panic and set his heart thumping. Piroo was cooking over a fire; Robin was conscious, and Caroline was fanning him with her hand. Rodney rolled over on his side and watched the red ants crawling among the leaves. Fight? What was there to fight? They ate and slept, and Robin lived; they ate and slept and moved. Moved. Where to?

He raised his head. “Piroo, where are we going?”

“Bombay.”

Rodney frowned painfully. Something wrong there—something wrong. Bombay was—eight hundred miles southwest as the roads ran. Eight hundred miles in a bullock cart, two and a half miles an hour. That made—too many hours. He drew his brows together. Too many miles, too many moths fluttering big black wings behind his eyeballs. If he could concentrate they’d go away.

Bombay. The only alternative was Kishanpur, and why did that make his spine tingle? Not reason—something lower, something that would make Jewel’s hair rise and roughen along the back. Jewel was dead. Shot to death for being a dog. A dog’s death.

He dared not see Sumitra again. What a chance she’d have to pay him back for that night of the Holi! She might even have him killed, by accident Who’d know? And Robin with him.

What was Caroline waiting for, so compressed? In plain reason, they had no choice. The old fool Piroo couldn’t take this wreck of a cart to Bombay, across a score of great rivers, through a country in flames—and the monsoon coming in four or five weeks! And who knew that Bombay Presidency
hadn’t fallen too? And Madras? Robin couldn’t survive the journey. Only a lunatic, or a scoundrel, could suggest going to Bombay. It was a trap.

He said, “Go to Kishanpur. We have to go to Kishanpur.”

When Piroo tried to argue Rodney screamed furiously, “Kishanpur, Kishanpur!” A drumming pain rattled his teeth, and he watched his hands fidgeting with the pistol. He’d have to kill someone.

Caroline spoke in her slow accurate Hindustani. “He’s right, Piroo. I hate it, I don’t know why—but the little boy must rest We have no choice.”

Piroo shrugged and turned away with a curt, “It’s all the same to me.” Rodney looked keenly at his back: this wasn’t the same man as the carpenter of Bhowani; this was a dangerous man, not to be trusted. One hour at a time. If he kept to that and was alert, he’d save Robin, and himself.

The decision made, he sank under a weight of depression and could not sleep but stared all day at the ants and talked to himself.

As the sun dipped into the hot red blaze behind the trees, they climbed into the cart. In the twilight they were threading through the jungle; at dark they dropped into the ruts of the track and the motion became smoother. The dark bulk of the trees passed over in a silent procession. Piroo swayed in silhouette against low eastern stars.

The night ended, the cart stopped, and the second day passed. Here there was no pool, and Piroo dug with his pickaxe to uncover a brackish trickle two feet down.

In the evening, as they set out, Piroo said, “We will cross at the ford by the falls. There may be other carts on the trail. Men travel by night in this season. I do not think we are in great danger, but keep hidden; and remember, do not shoot unless I say the word.”

There were other carts moving through the night. Piroo whispered that one, going in the same direction, was close ahead; shredded tendrils of dust from its wheels hung under
the trees still. Twice carts creaked past in the opposite direction; once a group of men trotted by, bunched together and singing to frighten off wild beasts. Beside a deserted shrine there was a sepoy; his rifle was in his hand and he was getting up from sleep.

The sound of the falls swished against the canvas, and the bullocks splashed into the ford. Rodney, peering out, could recognize now each ridge and plain of the hunting preserve: there Sumitra saw a paradise flycatcher, that branch nearly knocked Isobel’s hat off, here the Silver Guru had sat by the Monkeys’ Well and waited for the Dewan. The monkeys crashed and chattered overhead. The cart turned off, moved through the grove until it was out of sight of the trail, and stopped. The monkeys fell silent.

Piroo slipped down and whispered. “You did say that shako’s too small for you, sahib? It looks like it to me.”

He answered dully, “Yes. Rambir had quite a small head.”

Piroo disappeared, and for ten minutes nothing happened. At last they heard muttered voices and the crackling of leaves. Rodney put his eye to the slit.

Piroo was coming back, and in front of him the sepoy they had passed on the other side of the river. His stained green coat showed that he was of the 13th; he threaded wearily among the trees with the rising sun in his face, and Rodney saw that he knew him. It was Shyamsingh of his own company. Shyamsingh the quiet farmer, Shyamoo who snarled like a dog. His feet stumbled, and he looked sick. Rodney dragged the pistol from his belt and aimed at Piroo’s chest; he’d get it first.