Shadow of the Moon (52 page)

The household were by now too accustomed to her early rising for the man to feel any surprise, and he stumbled off, yawning and adjusting his
puggari
, to deliver the message. Yusaf must have been up already, although it was almost an hour before her usual time for riding; and barely fifteen minutes
later she was cantering down the long drive in the grey, aqueous light of the early morning. She had never been to Captain Randall's bungalow, though she had passed it almost daily. There was a light burning in one of the rooms and a groom was walking a restive horse up and down in front of the verandah. So he had not yet left! Winter restrained her mount with difficulty, for Furiante was feeling fresh and above himself and did not relish being kept to a gentle canter; but Winter had no intention of going too far ahead. She reined him in and made him walk sedately down a narrow lane under a feathery canopy of tamarisk boughs while she listened for the sound of Chytuc's hooves behind her.

She did not know the identity of the men who had whispered against the wall last night, and she had heard only one name - an unfamiliar one. But the men would not have been there if some at least had not been connected with the Residency. One, or all of them, must be in the Commissioner's employ. Winter could not believe that her syce Yusaf had been one of them, but she had been too frightened by what she had heard to take any chances, and she would have left him behind except that she had never ridden out without him before, and to do so now might cause comment.

If it were the servants in Conway's house - she did not think of it as hers - who plotted to murder Captain Randall, it would be just as well if it did not appear that she had warned him, for were it known that she had done so, it must follow that she had overheard them or that one of their number had betrayed them to her. She had no idea how to deal with that problem. Alex would know, but in the meantime she must avoid any appearance of deliberately turning him back from Chunwar, and must make it look as though she had met him by chance.

The lane came out upon an open stretch of ground beyond which lay a mango-tope and a deep belt of crop-lands. To the right lay the city and the river while half a mile to the left lay the
maidan
(parade-ground) and the rifle-range. Winter drew rein a little beyond the mouth of the lane as though undecided which way to turn. She heard Shiraz, the horse Yusaf rode, fidgeting behind her, and then the sound that she had been waiting for, and turned; swinging Furiante so that Alex had no choice but to stop. He pulled up, and Winter saw that he was alone. So they had been right in that at least.

She said on a note of surprise, and for the benefit of Yusaf: ‘Captain Randall! How fortunate that I should have met you. I have been wishing to see you. May I ride with you?'

It was the first time that she had met or spoken to him since the night of his arrival in Lunjore almost three months previously, but if Alex was in any way surprised at being thus accosted he gave no sign of it. He bowed slightly and said in his most expressionless voice: ‘Certainly, Mrs Barton, if you wish. But I am riding to Chunwar this morning and I am afraid that you would not find it very amusing. The going is rather rough.'

‘Then perhaps you will ride with me to the
maidan
instead,' said Winter, turning her horse's head. ‘You can ride to Chunwar some other morning.'

‘I am sorry to sound disobliging,' began Alex, ‘but—'

Winter looked over her shoulder at him with raised brows, letting the reins lie loose, and under cover of her long habit used her spur on Furiante. Furiante needed no second invitation. He had been sidling and snorting and seething with impatience for the past quarter of an hour, and he responded to the spur with all the outraged velocity of an exploding rocket.

Winter screamed once for Captain Randall's benefit, and thereafter concentrated on remaining in the saddle without making the smallest attempt to arrest Furiante's headlong flight. She was not, if the truth be known, in the least sure that she could do so if she wished, for Furiante had the bit between his teeth and was galloping as though he were pursued by seven devils.

Mercifully the ground was level, and once they were through the trees the vast stretch of the
maidan
lay ahead. The path through the trees was a narrow one and branches whipped at Winter's skirt; her hat fell off and her hair streamed out behind her like a black silk flag, and then they were racing across the open
maidan.
She could hear Chytuc's hooves behind her and Alex's voice shouting ‘Left! - pull left!' and only then remembered the wide ditch that bounded the far side of the ground. She pulled on the near-side rein with all her strength, but she could not turn the maddened horse. And then Alex was gaining on her and she saw Chytuc's black head and laid-back ears draw level with her, and Alex had caught her bridle and turned Furiante - still galloping at full stretch but tiring at last - away from the ditch and towards the open country. Two minutes later he had brought them to a stop.

Winter bowed over Furiante's neck in sudden weakness and felt Alex's hard fingers grip her shoulder and heard him say: ‘Are you all right?'

She lifted her head and looked at him - and saw the sudden comprehension in his face as he met that look. His hand dropped and he said incredulously: ‘Did you do that on purpose?'

Winter straightened up and drew a deep breath to steady herself. ‘I - I had to. I'm sorry. But I had to talk to you.
I had to
! Tell Yusaf to keep behind.'

Alex looked at her for a long moment. His eyes were black with anger and his mouth had closed in a hard, unpleasant line. He threw a curt word of command over his shoulder and touched Chytuc with his heel, and the two horses moved forward at a sober pace, Yusaf falling back out of earshot and following at a discreet distance.

Alex said curtly: ‘You had better do something about your hair. Give me the reins.'

He leant across and took them from her, and watched her as she attempted to gather up and re-roll the shining mass into some sort of order. The anger went out of his face and he smiled a little crookedly:

‘You might almost be one of the Spartans “combing their long hair for death” in the pass of Thermopylae. Don't look so tragic. What is it?'

Winter said: ‘I - I'm sorry about - about that, but I had to stop you from going to Chunwar.' Her voice was all at once small and unsteady and she glanced at him and saw that his brows had drawn together and his eyes held a look that was hard to read. She said abruptly: ‘Why did you ride alone today? Doesn't your orderly usually ride with you?'

‘He is ill,' said Alex briefly. ‘Why do you ask?'

Winter drew a little gasping breath. ‘Because - because that means it is true. I didn't imagine it all.'

Alex looked at her, frowning. ‘What is true? What is all this?'

‘They were going to kill you,' said Winter. ‘In the ravine on the road to Chunwar. I heard them talking last night, and I had to stop you. But - but I did not want them to know that I knew, so when you would not come with me I had to do something to make you. That is why I made Furiante bolt, and pretended that I was being run away with, so that you—'

Alex said: ‘Wait a minute. Do you mind saying that all over again, and slowly? I must be singularly slow-witted this morning.'

Quite suddenly there was a hint of a laugh in his voice, and Winter stiffened and the colour rushed up into her face. ‘You don't believe me. You think that I am— But it's true! They said that Niaz Mohammed would be given something to make him ill, and that your syce had a poisoned hand and so you would be riding alone, and—' She checked and said: ‘I - I am sorry. I do not seem to be telling it very well.'

‘Begin at the beginning,' advised Alex. ‘Who are “they"?'

‘I don't know. I only heard voices—' She told him the story of those voices that had whispered in the shadow of the blank wall where the bathroom sluice ran out, and of how it was that she had come to hear them, and Alex listened without interruption. When she had finished he was silent for a moment or two and then he asked if she had recognized any of the voices. Winter shook her head. ‘No. They were speaking very quietly, and the echo made it sound strange.'

‘No names?'

‘Only one. A man named Mehan Lal would be in the ravine to - to help. There is no one of that name among the servants.'

‘But there is among my acquaintances,' said Alex grimly.

He snapped his fingers at the level of his shoulder without turning his head. It was a brief and almost inaudible gesture, but Yusaf, twenty yards behind, saw it and spurred forward. ‘Huzoor?'

‘Hast thou a gun?'

Yusaf thrust a hand into the bosom of his coat and produced a small five-chambered Colt pistol; a surprising item of equipment for a syce. Alex held out his hand for it and slid it into his own pocket, and said: ‘I may have need of two. Take the Memsahib home by way of the cantonments, and keep a still tongue in thy head.'

He noticed Winter's startled face and smiled: a smile that did not quite
reach his eyes. ‘It's all right. Yusaf is one of my own men. I did not think that you should ride so far afield without a trustworthy escort. The times are not as settled as some people suppose.'

He made as though to turn Chytuc and Winter snatched at his rein.

‘No! Alex, no!' Her voice was sharp with panic.

Alex looked down at her white frightened face and the harsh lines of his own face softened. He dropped his hand over hers for a brief moment and gripped it hard and reassuringly.

‘I shall be all right. I promise you. Forewarned is forearmed, you know.'

But Winter's fingers still clung to the bridle. ‘What are you going to do?' she demanded breathlessly.

Alex grinned unexpectedly. ‘To tell the truth, I am not sure. But I do not like being gunned for, and I intend to discourage it. There is a deal of difference between falling into an ambush and walking into one with your eyes open.'

Winter said: ‘I'm coming with you - and Yusaf can come too, and—'

Alex shook his head. ‘Oh, no, you're not. That would spoil everything. They are expecting me to come alone, and if they see anyone with me they will abandon the idea and wait for another opportunity. And I might not be warned next time.'

‘Alex—'

Alex wrenched her hand from the bridle and said suddenly and savagely: ‘For God's sake don't look at me like that!' He saw her flinch as though he had struck her, and said with harsh impatience: ‘I'm sorry. I am very grateful to you for warning me. Now get on - go on back to the house.'

He wheeled Chytuc, and was gone, galloping back across the open ground towards the distant belt of trees, and Winter turned her horse's head and sat watching him grow smaller and smaller across the colourless plain until at last the trees swallowed him up.

The sky that had been pearl-grey when she had ridden out under the arch of the Residency gate was growing bright now with the sunrise, and only the morning star still shimmered faintly in the wash of saffron light that flooded upwards from the east - the morning star and a pale segment of moon, drowning in the rising tide of the dawn. It was less than an hour since she had left the Residency, but it seemed as though hours had passed - or years. As though she were not even the same person who had ridden out under that gate.

Why had she not known before that she loved Alex Randall? Why was it only now, when he was riding away from her, perhaps to his death, that she could realize how much he meant to her? She had loved him for so long and been too obsessed with her childish, foolish, pasteboard-and-tinsel image of Conway to recognize it. Once, in Malta, she had wanted him to kiss her, and been horrified at herself - because of Conway. And when he had kissed her at Delhi she had been shamed and startled by her own instinctive response,
because it had seemed a betrayal of Conway and she had hated herself for it. And hated Alex who had trapped her into it.

She had been blind and stupid and stubborn. She must always have known that she could trust Alex, but the shock of Mr Carroll's desperate fictions and Alex's cruel repudiation of them, followed by the sudden tumult of feeling that had taken control of her when he had held her and kissed her, had swept her out of her depth and into a helpless maelstrom of emotions that she had been unable to understand or control, and in which Conway - the rock to which she had clung for so many years - had seemed the only safe and solid refuge in a treacherous world. It was only now, facing the possibility of Alex's death, that all the mixed and unmanageable emotions had suddenly sorted themselves out and left only the one fact - that she loved him. But whether he lived or died, it was too late, because she had married Conway Barton.

Yusaf cleared his throat in a gently deprecatory hint that his orders had been to see that she returned to the Residency, and Winter straightened her slim shoulders and lifted her chin in the familiar gesture of her childhood when she had braced herself to meet reproof or hurt or humiliation and to endure it in silence, and turning Furiante she rode back through the brightening dawn to her husband's house.

But she did not enter it. Instead, she dismounted within the gate, and dismissing Yusaf and the horses, went across to the great banyan tree to sit silent among the roots and watch Akbar Khan's little grand-daughter share her morning meal with the birds. The sight of the small, still figure with its slow unhurried movements, surrounded by a host of friendly birds and squirrels, was always a soothing one to Winter, and the creatures had become sufficiently used to her frequent presence to pay little attention to her. But today they appeared wilder than usual, and would barely come to Zeb-un-Nissa's soft, wordless call.

‘It is because they know that thou art afraid,' said Zeb-un-Nissa. She turned her enormous unfocused eyes on Winter and smiled her sweet vague smile. ‘There is no need. He will come to no harm.'