Shadow of the Moon (82 page)

She did not know how long she lay there, mindless and still, with closed eyes, but presently the slow thought drifted through her brain that it would be easy - easy and pleasant - to slide into the main stream and let the current carry her out and down into the cool darkness of the deep water. There was nothing to live for and she was very tired …

But even as she thought it, the voice of the water whispering against her ears seemed to change into another voice: a laboured, whispering voice that had spoken to her that morning - ‘…
'er ma was good to you. You owe ‘er something. Get along now, dearie
…'

Dear Mrs Holly! Was she dead? or was she still alive and alone and frightened? ‘She was braver than I am,' thought Winter. ‘Braver than all of us. I couldn't have done that. I must stay alive as long as I can because of Lottie - and Mrs Holly. Because Lottie is going to need help. There is nothing else to stay alive for—'

She turned her head in the shallows and opened her eyes. The sky and the river were no longer gold but rose-pink, and the leaves and flowers of the tree that leaned over her made a stiff, formal pattern against that wash of colour. Something moved in the pattern, a green parrot with a scarlet beak and long green and blue tail feathers … And all at once the Gulab Mahal was there before her. The enchanted garden of her childhood. The formal patterns of leaves and flowers and brightly coloured birds that moved against a sunset sky, and that had remained fixed in her memory as a bright promise through all the grey, intervening years.

The whisper of the water was no longer Mrs Holly's voice, but old Aziza Begum's, telling her stories in the twilight: Zobeida's, making the old promise - ‘one day we will return to the Gulab Mahal, and all will be well …' There was something else to stay alive for after all. Somehow, some day, she
would reach the Rose Palace. She had promised herself that for too long to relinquish it now.

A new energy seemed to flow through her with the thought, and she came to her feet and wrung out her wet hair, and reaching for the bundle of clothing among the roots, washed out the torn, soiled garments in the river. They made a damp, heavy bundle when she had finished but they would dry quickly. She climbed the bank again and wrapped the makeshift sari about her once more, leaving her wet hair hanging loose.

A peacock cried in the jungle, and the call echoed across the wide river and was answered by another on the far bank. Pea-or …
Pea-or … Pea-or!
The cry seemed to underline the loneliness of the silent river and the dense miles of jungle, and to wail for all those who lay dead and who had been alive when that sun rose that was setting now. A savage and unbearable pain stabbed through the numbness about Winter's heart. ‘The air is getting to it,' she thought, and she picked up the wet bundle and the revolver and turned from the river to make her way back to the Hirren Minar, stumbling through the tangled grass and the thickets as though she had been blind and must feel her way.

She had stayed far longer by the river than she had meant to do, and now the sun had gone and the swift twilight was closing in. She had marked her way carefully, but in the fading light the marks were no longer visible and she was unsure of her direction. Fear replaced the pain in her breast, and she stood still, trying to remember the landmarks that she had taken note of when she had left the ruined building. Presently she began to move again, though with more care, but she had gone less than a dozen yards when she stopped again at the edge of a small clearing.

Something was moving in the jungle ahead of her, as though some large animal was walking slowly towards her through the dry, rustling undergrowth; and remembering the tiger she froze into stillness, her hand gripping the revolver. The sound came nearer and nearer, and now she could see the grass and the bushes on the far side of the clearing sway to the movement of something or someone who was moving directly towards her.
Someone
- was the hunt so close?

Winter crouched down where she stood, seeing again in an ugly flash of memory the dark, contorted face of the man who had pursued and murdered the screaming Delia. Her finger tightened upon the trigger of the revolver as the high grass rustled and parted, and Alex walked out into the clearing.

For a moment she did not believe it. She had given him up for dead, and the sight of him - filthy, blood-stained, dazed but alive - was a greater shock by far than the sight of his dead body would have been. The revolver slipped from her hand and she stood up with a choking cry and took a swift step forward, the bundle of clothing falling unheeded to the ground.

Alex checked, swaying, and his hand moved automatically to the butt of his
useless revolver. Through the haze before his eyes he saw a slim Indian girl confronting him in the dusk, the blue of her thin cotton sari and the blue-black of her long, unbound hair melting into the shadows of the darkening jungle behind her. Then the haze cleared - and it was Winter.

They stood staring at each other for a minute that seemed like an hour, and then Alex stumbled forward, and as she ran to him he dropped on his knees and she caught him, holding him to her, and felt his arms go about her in a desperate grip.

She held his head against her, rocking him as though he had been a child. His hair smelt of dust and sweat and the reek of black powder, and she pressed her fingers through it, whispering endearments that he did not hear, and listening to the terrible, grinding sobs that seemed to wrench his body to pieces. She could feel the heat of those tears soaking through the thin cloth and wetting her body, and she held him tighter, straining him against her, until at last they stopped. The racking shudders ceased, and presently he lifted his head and looked up into her face.

His eyes in the fading twilight held an odd, blind anger, and his arms lifted and pulled her down onto the grass. She felt his hands on the thin cotton of the sari, wrenching it away, and he hid his grimed and smoke-blackened face between her small firm breasts. Her skin was cool from the river, and smooth and sweet, and he kissed it with an open mouth, moving his harsh cheek and his aching head against it, holding her closer. Then his hands moved again, and for a fleeting moment the fear and the horror of her wedding night returned to Winter. But this was not Conway, drunken and bestial. This was Alex - Alex—

There was neither love nor tenderness in Alex's hands or his kisses. They were deeply and desperately physical, and she knew that for the moment her cool body meant no more to him than an anodyne to pain - a temporary forgetfulness and release from intolerable strain. But it was enough that she could give him that.

Conway was dead - they were all dead. All those people who had lived and laughed in the cantonments at Lunjore and at Delhi. Mrs Abuthnot, Colonel Abuthnot, Delia, Nissa, perhaps Ameera too. The whole world was breaking into pieces and dissolving in blood and tears and terror. But here in the quiet forest there were only herself and Alex - Alex's arms and his mouth and his need of her. Alex who was alive …

At long last his hold slackened, and he lay still. The sky darkened above them, turning from green to a violet-blue that was strewn with stars. The starlight and the thin moon made odd shapes out of the trees and the thickets and the tussocks of grass, and sometimes something rustled in the jungle or an owl hooted in the darkness. Once, very far away, a barking deer called a warning that a tiger was passing, and once a nilghai, the wild blue bull of the jungles, crashed through the dense undergrowth not a dozen yards away. But Alex slept the sleep of utter mental and physical exhaustion, and Winter
held him in her arms and watched the stars and was not afraid of the night noises or of anything else.

She thought once, and fleetingly, of Lottie and Lou Cottar. They would think that she had lost her way or met with some accident, and Mrs Cottar would not dare to call her name or show a light, for fear that her failure to return might mean that there were men in the jungle hunting for fugitives. They would be frightened, but it could not be helped. Alex was asleep and she would not wake him even if she could.

His head was heavy on her breast and the weight of the arm that lay across her and pressed her down on the warm dry grass seemed to increase with every breath she drew, while her own arm beneath him had passed from numbness to prickling pain. But she did not move except to hold him closer, her cheek against his hair, and presently a breeze got up; a hot breath of wind that the river had cooled until it blew pleasantly through the jungle with a sleepy, soothing, rustling sound, dispersing the mosquitoes and night-flying insects and lulling her at last into a sleep as deep as Alex's own.

Even the screeching of an owl from a
sal
tree on the edge of the clearing did not wake them. But five miles and more away, beyond the jungle and the nullah, a jackal howled in the gardens of the Residency and woke the Commissioner of Lunjore.

The Commissioner returned slowly to consciousness and to the all too familiar waking sensations of an aching head, red-hot eyeballs and a tongue that felt too large for the dry mouth that contained it.

He lay still for a while, feeling the nausea rise in waves. His head was lying on something lumpy and stiff. Not a pillow … what was it? He tried to turn his head and found that he could not do so, not because the shooting pain that the attempt sent through his skull discouraged such a movement, but because his cheek appeared to be stuck fast to some dried and gummy substance.

There was a roaring noise in his ears and he discovered that his arm was lying across a body - a woman's body by the feel of it; frills and furbelows. Curls tickled his forehead and there was a smell of violets - Chrissie! Must have been drunker than he thought if he'd taken Chrissie to bed and couldn't remember it! Bed? Why, he was on the floor! Chrissie must have been drunk too - damned drunk. Must ‘uv been a helluva party! What had happened to the others? He opened his eyes with an effort. Dammit, it was morning! - a pretty kettle of fish!

The room was full of a hot yellow glare that waxed and waned, wavered and grew bright again. Sun comin' up. He shut his eyes again and realized that he must move. Wouldn't do to be found in broad daylight huggin' Chrissie Wilkinson on the floor. He lifted his head with a violent effort, wrenching it free from whatever had held it, and had a brief glimpse of Chrissie Wilkinson's
face and her tumbled over-bright curls before the pain of the sudden movement made him retch and retch again.

He vomited helplessly, aware, even through the agonizing waves of nausea, of the odd manner in which the hot sunlight beyond the windows wavered and flared. Presently the worst had passed and he lifted his head at last and propped open his aching eyes with his fingers. It began to dawn on him that it was not sunlight outside the window. It was not even daylight. It was night, and something was on fire. ‘Servants' quarters,' thought the Commissioner. ‘Blurry fools! - they c'n dam' well put it out themselves!' He stumbled to his feet and staggered across the room to the windows.

The servants' quarters had been smouldering for many hours, for the servants, having looted what they could, had run away, and a piece of glowing charcoal from an abandoned cooking fire had fallen out onto a roll of matting. The flames had spread slowly, and it was the sudden and unexpected night wind that had fanned them to a blaze so that they set alight the whole row of tinder-dry huts.

The Commissioner stared dully at the roaring flames. The glare hurt his eyes and he supposed that by this time half the place was aroused and that the fire would soon be under control. He turned back to Chrissie Wilkinson. He must wake her and send her home. Wouldn't do to have an open scandal. He noticed suddenly that he was not even in his own bedroom, but in his wife's. Where was Winter? Nice thing if she were to walk in on a scene like this! He doubted if she would stand for it. He staggered back across the room and dropped on his knees beside the silent figure on the floor.

‘Gerrup, Chrissie. Wake up - party's over. There's a fire, and fellows will be comin' in.
Chrissie
!' He shook her. She felt very odd. Not warm and plump and soft as Chrissie had always been, but stiff - stiff and cold.

A shudder ran through the Commissioner's obese body and the shock seemed to clear some of the fog from his brain. He moved so that his shadow no longer fell on her, and saw then that she was dead. Not only dead, but appallingly injured. He put up a trembling hand to his face, feeling it and realizing that it was blood from those wounds that had dried and held his cheek to her breast. Had he killed her? He could not remember. He could not remember anything. Had he gone too far at last and murdered her in a drunken frenzy?

He whimpered her name, tugging at her cold body. ‘Chrissie! - Chrissie! No … can't be true … I couldn't—
Chrissie
!' He tried to stand and finding that he could not he crawled to the door on hands and knees. Every door and window in the house stood wide and the glare of the burning buildings filled the rooms with hot light. He saw the shambles in the hall and pulled himself upright.

There was a body lying across the door at his feet, its face upturned to him: Alex's servant, Alam Din. There was a broken sword in Alam Din's hand, for he had tried to hold the door against the howling mob of killers, and had
accounted for three before he had himself been killed and the door that he had defended battered down. Their bodies still lay where they had fallen, for the mob had not even paused to remove its own dead. The Commissioner held tightly to the door jamb and after a long time, shivering as though with ague, he crept forward, supporting himself against the wall.

The house was deadly still, and except where the light of the burning buildings illuminated it, dark with an impenetrable darkness. A darkness that hid many things, as the flickering flames revealed others. The corpse of a child that had been cut almost in half by a blow from a sword lay just inside the dining-room door, and across its body, as though to protect it, lay its mother, Harriet Cameron.