Shadow of the Moon (32 page)

There was some ritual being performed that he could see but not understand, and then he realized that the fresh blood was being mixed with the flour on the platter. He caught the familiar movements of kneading that he had seen a thousand times before in the lines and beside camp-fires and in the bazaars. They were making a chuppatti; the daily bread of India. To the droning accompaniment of strange incantations and the ceaseless, maddening thud of the drum the dough was kneaded, shaped, flattened and baked on a metal platter laid across the glowing brazier. And all the while, to the sound of that chanting, the rows of watching men swayed and bowed and grovelled on the ground in a state of half-hypnotic frenzy.

At last the platter was lifted off the fire and the priests of Kali broke up the bread that smoked upon it, mumbling and grunting invocations to gods and devils - invocations as old and as evil as those chanted in the temples of Moloch. The man with the ruby earrings was handed a square of silk by someone behind him, and laying it across his hands he received the broken pieces of the chuppatti from the priests.

‘Let the token be sent forth!' howled the tallest of the priests, tossing his arms above his head. ‘Let it go up and down the land. From the North to the South, from the East to the West! And wheresoever it passes, there shall men's hearts be turned to hatred of the oppressors. For this is the pestilence - this is the evil - this is the blood of the British!' His eyeballs rolled in his head and there was froth on his lips. ‘Hear me, Kali! Hear me, O drinker of blood! From the North to the South! From the East to the West!'

He fell to the ground and writhed upon the stone floor as the second priest flung oil into the brazier and a crackling flame leapt upward to the roof, blazed furiously for a moment and died. The drum crashed and was still. The chanting ceased on a long wailing note and the vault was plunged into darkness and silence - a darkness in which only the red coals of the brazier gleamed like a single malignant eye.

A voice spoke softly into that silence: ‘This that ye have witnessed shall be binding upon all; for were it known, there is not one here whom the
feringhis
would not hang at a rope's end for this night's work. In the eyes of the Company's Government all who have seen it would be held guilty of the
blood that has been shed. It were well to remember this, lest any be tempted to speak unwisely.' The voice ceased, and presently man after man rose noiselessly and groped their way to the stair shaft to pass up it and out into the clean night air.

Once there they did not linger, but seemed anxious to avoid each other's company, emerging from the shaft like ants debouching from a hole in the ground, to hurry furtively away into the darkness.

The torch-bearers had gone and the stone-paved square with its surrounding wall of jungle was shadowy under the starlight and the waning moon. Alex made his way down the black length of the nullah, guided by a spark of light that proved to be a single
chirag
- a tiny earthenware saucer filled with oil in which a wisp of cotton did duty as a wick - which had been left on a ledge by the narrow cleft of the gateway. He saw the spark vanish briefly as the man ahead of him passed in front of it and entered the tunnel, and then he himself had reached it.

17

Three minutes later Alex was climbing the goat-track on the far side of the nullah and presently he was among the high grass at the end of the plain.

A hand touched his arm as he passed under the black shadow of a thorn tree, and a voice whispered: ‘It is I, brother.'

‘Back!' said Alex softly. He caught Niaz by the wrist and dragged him swiftly back into the high grass beside the path, crouching down beside him. A moment later another man climbed the slope out of the nullah and passed along the path at a jog-trot. It was a sadhu, his ash-smeared body grey in the moonlight. ‘Down,' whispered Alex to Niaz who would have moved. ‘Keep down!' They flattened themselves against the dry ground in the shelter of the dusty, sharp-edged grass and lay still as man after man hurried silently along the narrow goat-track towards the distant village, each man keeping his distance from the next and each one glancing furtively from left to right and quickly over his shoulder: sadhus, sepoys, merchants, townsmen and zemindars; followers of the Prophet or wearers of the sacred thread; disciples of Baba Nanak, and worshippers of Kali.

‘Divide and rule,' thought Alex watching them as they passed, their feet almost noiseless on the dusty goat-track and their breathing loud in the warm silence of the late September night. As long as these people were divided by their castes and their creeds into antagonistic factions they would always be at the mercy of a conqueror, but if they once combined they could stand against any from sheer weight of numbers. ‘But they will never combine,' thought Alex. ‘Never. Half of them hate each other more than they hate us. This will not last …'

Niaz jerked at his sleeve and whispered: ‘Why do we wait? It is not good to linger here. Let us go.'

‘Hush,' said Alex softly. ‘There is a debt to pay. When these have gone we go back. There are some few who will remain. The priests will leave last, for there is work to do. They cannot leave the dead unburied.'

‘Has there been killing, then?'

‘Yes. Quiet - here is another—'

Two men this time. One tall and turbaned, his hawk nose clear-cut against the starlight; the other stout and muffled in a shawl that was wound about his shoulders and over his head as though to guard against the night air. The tall man did not walk furtively as the others had done. He strode past, brushing against the grasses, careless of noise, and although he spoke in an undertone his words were clearly audible:

‘Dogs and devil-worshippers!' said the tall man furiously. ‘Must they
stoop to such filth to ensure that none shall betray them for gain? Now are all our heads forfeit for this night's work.'

‘Hush - oh hush!' begged the stout man, pausing to peer anxiously over his shoulder. ‘Surely thine is forfeit already, Maulvi Sahib, because of the words thou hast spoken against the
Angrezis
.'

‘They will not hang me for a word,' said the tall man scornfully, ‘for with the purblind vanity of their race they do not fear such talk. But let them hear of this killing and they will hunt us down like mad jackals - each one of us. Dogs and devil-worshippers—' The sound of their voices faded as they disappeared into the darkness.

‘That is Ahmed Ullah, a talukdar of Faizabad,' whispered Niaz. ‘He is one who goes up and down the land speaking against the Company's Raj. They call him the Maulvi of Faizabad.'

At last the steady procession of shadowy figures ceased and for a full ten minutes no one passed along the narrow path. ‘Thirty-seven,' said Niaz. ‘I have kept tally. There should be some few more, but not all came this way. Some came along the nullah from the northward. There are two paths that enter it from that end.'

Alex stood up with infinite caution and remained for a further minute or two listening intently. But the night was silent and nothing moved. Niaz said softly: ‘It is foolishness to go back into the tiger's lair having once escaped. Forgo thy revenge and come away. There is more in this than one life.'

‘It was a child,' said Alex. ‘An
Angrezi
child.'

‘Ah!' said Niaz. ‘Let us go back, then.'

There was no other way of reaching the ruined fort except by the way they had taken before, and they crept down the steep sandy slope that led down into the nullah, their nerves tensing to each rattle of a dislodged pebble or slither of dry earth crumbling beneath their feet. The bed of the nullah was by now in complete darkness, but Niaz possessed eyes like a cat, and though Alex was not his equal in this he could see well enough not to be unduly troubled by it.

The huge stone-paved courtyard lay bathed in starlight in which the clumps of coarse grass, thorn and stunted saplings that had thrust up here and there between the paving-stones took on the appearance of crouching men, but nothing stirred except a breath of night wind in the grasses. The two men stole forward silently, moving from one clump of shadow to the next, until they reached the shelter of the
peepul
tree that straddled the entrance to the roofless hall.

The block of stone that closed the shaft still leant upright against the lowest step of the ruined stair that rose behind it, and from the shaft itself came a faint light and a murmur of voices. Alex left the shelter of the
peepul
tree and creeping forward until he was directly above it, knelt listening. A voice that was faintly familiar was speaking in tones of cold anger:

‘… so all are endangered!'

‘Nay, all are now bound one to another!' replied another voice, a shrill hysterical voice. ‘None will dare betray us, since all are guilty of the blood - as thou thyself hast said! They will keep silence now for their lives' sake. And was not this thing thine own scheme? A ruse - an excellent ruse! - for the unsettling of men's minds? The making of this first one with spells and priests and incantations and the calling up of spirits, so that the tale of its beginning might hasten the work? And for such things a sacrifice is necessary - yes, necessary.'

‘A goat!' snapped the first voice. ‘Had I known that aught else were planned—'

‘Yea, a goat,' interrupted the second speaker. “‘
A white goat for Kali!
” It was thyself who chose that password! But now' - the voice rose shrilly - ‘now is the spell doubly sure! Of what use to Mother Kali is the blood of one starveling
bakri
when we may offer her the blood of a thousand - nay, a hundred thousand
feringhis
? In this sacrifice we have given a sign and a promise of that which is to come. A child of the Abominable Ones - the eaters of cattle, the defilers of caste! - a male child. May it be the first of many! Would that their throats were as one throat, men, women and children together, that I might slit them with a single stroke!' The voice rose until it was a scream of rage.

‘That would I too,' said the first speaker. ‘But to slaughter a defenceless babe in this fashion is an abomination before Gods and men.'

‘Thou would'st spare the young of the serpent?
Pho
! That is indeed folly, since one such, if allowed to live, will one day sire many. They must be destroyed; leaf and branch, root and seed. Not one must be spared. Not one -
not one
!'

Alex heard the man stamp his feet furiously upon the ground so that the vault echoed. There was a brief silence and then the first speaker said shortly: ‘Well, it is done now and it cannot be undone. But though this may do well enough for the villages, it will not serve for the sepoys. For them it must be something that strikes deeper and that touches every man. They are already as tinder, but there is as yet no spark. No matter; we will find it.'

Alex felt a touch on his arm and Niaz whispered in his ear: ‘Let us let down the stone. I do not think they will lift it from below. They will be trapped like rats and die slowly.'

Alex's eyes gleamed in the starlight and he rose to his feet, and then checked and shook his head. ‘No. They could, I think, find a way out. There are bats in that place, and where a bat can enter men might burrow a way out. We will wait. They must come up one by one.'

Niaz nodded and eased his knife from its sheath, and then quite suddenly his head came round with a jerk and he stiffened like a pointer, listening. ‘Back!' said Niaz in a harsh whisper. ‘There are others here!' They turned from the stair shaft and a moment later were once again among the shadows of the
peepul
tree, crouched down among the twisted roots.

Niaz's ears had not deceived him. There was someone approaching from the dense jungle behind the ruined walls. A branch cracked and grasses rustled, and presently they heard the sound of shod feet on stone. Two men emerged from the blackness beyond a crumbling archway and passing under the shadow of the
peepul
tree stopped by the entrance to the stair shaft. In the clear starlight they were little more than dark silhouettes against the paler expanse of the open courtyard; shadows who carried something in their hands that looked, in the uncertain light, like short-handled axes. A nightjar called from the jungle away to the right and a moment later, from the opposite side, an owl hooted, and one of the shadows spoke:

‘The
philao
and the
thiboa
both! The omens are auspicious, though they come late. And the
bhil
is well hidden.'

There was a chink of metal striking against stone as the man rested the thing he carried, and Alex felt Niaz shiver and was aware with a sense of shock that he was frightened. He had never known Niaz show fear before and had thought him a stranger to it. But now he could feel it shudder through the body whose shoulder touched his, and he knew that Niaz was sweating and shivering in the grip of a similar horror to the one he himself had experienced in the vault that lay beneath their feet.

The man who had spoken bent down and called softly down the shaft: ‘
Ohé, thákur
- it is done.' He was answered from below, and a moment later a head appeared above the hole in the paving. Alex's muscles tensed involuntarily but Niaz's fingers clamped down upon his arm and checked him as four men one after another emerged from the shaft, the light from the vault below glimmering redly on the rubies that one of them wore in his ears. The men conferred together in whispers and he of the earrings said querulously : ‘It is late, and I have far to go before morning. The two down there can close the stair. Let us go.' It was the same voice that Alex had heard screaming shrilly of death …

One of the men turned and called down the shaft: ‘We go now. Close the stone when all is finished.' The faint light from below brightened for a brief moment as though more fuel had been thrown upon the brazier, and for an instant the speaker's face showed clear against the surrounding darkness.

It was Kishan Prasad.

The next moment the group by the stair shaft had turned away and vanished as quietly as they had come, and the night was silent again.

The two who crouched in the shadow of the
peepul
tree did not move for a full five minutes after the last faint rustle had died away, and then at last Niaz released his grip on Alex's arm and put up an unsteady hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

‘My father's uncle spoke truth,' said Niaz in a shaking whisper. ‘They are
not
all dead!'

‘Who are not dead?'

‘Those two were
lughais
- the diggers of the
bhil
, the buriers of the slain.

Didst thou not see that they carried the
khussee
? They are
Phansigers
. Thugs! The followers of Bhowani. The Stranglers!' Niaz's voice shook and Alex heard his teeth chatter. ‘Now do I know that this is an evil thing that must be stamped out, else will the old evils arise again. Two score years ago my father's uncle aided Sleeman Sahib in the hunting down of the Stranglers, and he has told me—' The words broke off in a shiver. ‘Let us go from here. Let us go quickly!'

‘In a little while,' whispered Alex. ‘There are only two below.'