The Place of Dead Kings (26 page)

Jack kept low behind the brambles. He could hear Rao’s shivery breath next to him. He hadn’t had time to reload his pistol yet – he’d been in too much of a hurry to keep up with the savages. If they were attacked, he would grab Rao’s firearm. He didn’t trust the Captain to shoot straight.

The savage paused behind the bushes, crept uphill a couple of feet, then squatted beneath a tree. He sat there for at least ten minutes. Jack’s knee ached, but he didn’t dare move into a more comfortable position.

Finally, the savage stood quickly and flitted away into the dark like a sprite.

Rao breathed out. ‘What was that about?’

‘Think he was just scouting around. We’ll have to be careful. There could be plenty more about.’

Rao shivered and glanced into the black mesh of the woods. The wind rustled the branches overhead.

‘It’ll be too dangerous to go down there now.’ Jack gestured to the camp. ‘We could be spotted.’

‘What should we do, then?’

‘We’ll have to wait until morning. Then keep following.’

‘Keep following? That’s your plan?’

‘You got a better one?’

Rao pursed his lips, but didn’t reply.

Jack led the way uphill. He crept as silently as he could and from time to time stopped and listened for the telltale sounds of someone following. He heard nothing, but this reassured him less than it might have. The savage he’d seen earlier had moved stealthily through the forest. The man clearly knew this countryside well. He’d probably spent his whole life hunting and tracking in woodland like this.

Jack reached a moss-covered boulder that bulged out of the slope. At the base of the rock was a hollow that would provide a small amount of shelter. It was the best place he’d seen to make camp. And what was more, when he turned, he could see the savages’ fires below through a gap in the trees.

‘We’ll stop here,’ he said.

Rao frowned. ‘Here?’

Jack rubbed his chin. The hollow didn’t offer much protection from the elements, and they couldn’t risk lighting a fire.

He hunted around nearby, found a few fallen branches and propped them against the boulder to form a simple bivouac. Then he grasped armfuls of leaves and twigs and laid them across the branches. He glanced at Rao at one point and saw the Captain just standing there in the shadows, fidgeting with his handkerchief.

Jack knew there was no point asking Rao to help. The Captain would never have camped without an enormous tent and would never have so much as sullied his hands to collect firewood.

Once he’d finished, Jack slapped his hands together to dust them. He nodded at the bivouac. ‘There you go.’

Rao pressed his handkerchief to his nose and breathed in sharply. ‘Wonderful.’

They both clambered in and sat in the mottled darkness. The scent of wet leaves and fresh earth hung about them. Rao looked around with his face twisted, as if he’d been forced to eat excrement. He put his hand on the ground, then lifted it again and shook off the dirt. He tried resting his other hand against the boulder, but he pulled it back when it touched the moist moss.

Jack fumbled in the knapsack and pulled out the bag of dry rations. He stuck a biscuit in his mouth and offered the bag to Rao, who crinkled his nose in disgust and turned his head away.

‘Suit yourself.’ Jack took a bite of the hard, flavourless biscuit and softened it with a swig of water from the canteen.

If Rao wanted to starve himself, he was welcome to.

Rao sniffed and stared at the distant lights, hugging his knees to his chest. He looked so utterly miserable Jack even felt sorry for him for a moment.

‘You have to eat something.’ Jack offered Rao the bag again. ‘Look, I’m not even touching them.’

‘What’s your name?’ Rao’s voice was sharp.

Jack chewed his biscuit. Rao didn’t know his name? He hadn’t thought about it, but of course there’d been no need for the Captain to know anything about him. Jack had been just one of a hundred porters.

He put the biscuit on his knee, wiped his hand on his hose and offered it to Rao. ‘Jack.’

Rao looked at the hand and frowned.

‘It’s our custom,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a greeting. We shake hands.’

Rao tightened his lips and took a sniff through his handkerchief.

Jack snorted and took away his hand. ‘Fine.’ He picked up the biscuit and bit into it. ‘Don’t touch me, then.’

Why was he even wasting time talking to Rao? The Captain was just a temporary ally.

He shot a look at the satchel, which the Captain still kept pressed beside him. Jack would have to find out what was in that bag. But not now. First he had to free Saleem, and he still needed Rao’s help with that.

‘I will have a biscuit,’ Rao said.

‘Changed your mind, have you?’ Jack tossed over the bag.

Rao gingerly slid open the drawstring, sniffed the contents, wrinkled his face and finally pulled out a biscuit. He winced, shut his eyes and took a bite. He chewed for a few seconds, opened his eyes, and gulped some water to help wash the biscuit down. He took another bite.

‘Not so bad when you’re hungry, are they?’ Jack slipped another biscuit from the bag and munched on it.

‘Can’t believe I’m eating this.’ Rao sighed. ‘Guess I’m so polluted now it hardly matters.’

‘You need to forget about pollution and all that. We’re stuck out in the wilds.’

‘I suppose you’re right. I’ll have to go through weeks of blessings when we get back, no matter what I do now.’

‘Weeks? Seems a long time.’

‘That’s the way it works. No other Rajthanans will come near me until I’m pure again.’

Jack knew something of the Rajthanans’ complex purity-and-pollution customs, but little of the detail. ‘Can’t say I understand all that.’

‘No, I suppose not. No need for you to. You’re a native. Things are more simple for you.’

Simple? Was living like a slave in your own country simple? But Jack didn’t bother contradicting Rao. The Captain was fresh from Rajthana and had no idea what life was like for ordinary English men and women. There was no point trying to explain it to him.

They chewed in silence and drank the remainder of the water.

‘I’ll keep first watch,’ Jack said. ‘You sleep.’

Rao untied his turban, sweeping the material around and around his head and then folding it neatly and placing it in his satchel. His head – with its short bob of hair pulled back into a knot – looked naked and exposed without its covering.

‘I can’t believe I’m going to sleep without doing my puja,’ Rao said. ‘I can’t believe I’m not even going to brush my teeth.’

Jack handed over a blanket. ‘Never brushed my teeth once in my life.’

‘Shiva.’ Rao lay back and pulled the blanket over himself. ‘I really have come to the end of the earth.’

Rao rolled on to his side, while Jack stayed up, wrapped in his own blanket.

The scent of sandalwood, rose and other perfumed oils permeated the bivouac. Jack had smelt this many times before – the Rajthanans constantly coated themselves in ointments and lotions. They rubbed their hair with a concoction they called ‘champoo’ and they had the odd notion that you should wash yourself entirely every day.

It was a strange situation. Jack had never slept in close proximity to a Rajthanan. It was unthinkable. Even when Jhala had led Jack’s platoon across the wilderness, he’d always slept apart from his troops. And Jhala had been closer to his men than most officers.

Rao shifted, the leaves beneath him crunching.

It must be an even stranger situation for the Captain. Lost somewhere in a world of savages.

Jack stared out at the glinting fires. How was he going to rescue Saleem? He’d tried to sound confident in front of Rao, but he had no idea how they were going to do it.

He shouldn’t have let Saleem come along. He’d said no at first, but then he’d wavered. Even back in the gorge, when they were under attack, he should have insisted Saleem go with Robert.

Damn it.

Then he sighed. There was no point in dwelling on this now.

Rao breathed slowly and deeply. He seemed to be asleep.

Good. Maybe he’d run faster tomorrow if he got a good rest. If he couldn’t keep up, he would become a liability. And in that case, Jack would have to leave him behind.

Jack reached around for the knapsack. He was finally going to clean out the pistol as best he could. But then a shaft of pain impaled his chest. He shut his eyes and tried to wait it out, but it quickly grew worse. He gasped and lay back. His eyes flashed white and he gritted his teeth. He didn’t think he could bear the torture for much longer.

Then the pain ebbed slightly and he took a raspy breath. Rivulets of sweat coursed over his face. He took another breath, tried to meditate enough to at least block out the full force of the pain. He concentrated on the air passing in and out of his nostrils. Fought to still his thoughts.

But another blast struck him. He tensed every muscle in his body and choked back a shout.

For a second he was certain he would die, but then the pain subsided again.

His injury continued to flare and fade in agonising pulses. He didn’t know how long it went on for, but it seemed like hours. He shut his eyes and tried to blot it out. His thoughts spiralled. He saw Elizabeth in Folly Brook, Katelin on her deathbed and then Saleem huddled beside a fire in the savages’ camp.

Finally, one memory beat so insistently in his head he couldn’t think of anything else. He was sixteen years old and standing before the army barracks outside Bristol, after having walked all the way from Shropshire.

‘I want to join up,’ he told the guard at the gate.

The guard sent for the Sergeant Major, who marched across the beaten-earth courtyard, looked Jack up and down and said, ‘Come with me.’

Jack followed, marvelling at the Sergeant Major’s smart blue and grey uniform. The brass buttons on the man’s tunic shone, his black boots gleamed and there was not so much as a speck of dirt on his clothes. He was apparently an ordinary Englishman, but he looked as grand as an earl, or even a king.

Would Jack himself look like that soon?

The Sergeant Major took him into a long building with wattle-and-daub walls and a stone floor. An Englishman in a grey tunic approached and explained that he was a surgeon. He asked Jack to remove his tunic and undershirt, then listened to his chest through an ear trumpet, examined his teeth, stared into his eyes and told him to breathe deeply a few times.

When the surgeon nodded approvingly, the Sergeant Major told Jack to put on his clothes again and then led him across a parade ground. They reached a bungalow with a veranda across the front. Jack followed the Sergeant Major up the steps and into a dimly lit room.

The first thing he noticed was the cloud of aromatic tobacco smoke. The second was the scent of perfumed oils. The smell was luxurious – as if he’d entered a palace, rather than a small office.

Behind a desk, puffing on a hookah, sat Captain Jhala. He was in his early thirties at the time and his face was free of the lines and furrows that would come to dominate it in later life. He wore a red and white turban that shone in the haze and a blue tunic that had a sun emblem embroidered in great detail on its left side.

Jhala drew on a pipe, exhaled the smoke slowly and sat forward. His dark eyes twinkled as they studied Jack.

The Sergeant Major said a namaste and nudged Jack in the side.

Jack looked up, uncertain what he was supposed to do.

‘Go on.’ The Sergeant Major pressed his hands together again in demonstration. ‘Namaste.’

Jack copied the Sergeant Major, put his hands together in front of his chest, as if he were praying in church, and said, ‘Namaste.’

The word felt strange in his mouth, like an exotic sweet. He had no idea what it meant.

‘You’re supposed to bow as well,’ the Sergeant Major snapped.

‘It’s all right.’ Jhala scraped his chair back and stood. ‘He’ll learn.’

Jhala walked around the side of the desk and came closer, the scent of perfume growing stronger. He stood in front of Jack with his hands behind his back. ‘How old are you, boy?’

‘Sixteen, sir,’ Jack said.

‘Ever used a musket?’

‘No, sir. But I want to try.’

‘Good.’

Jhala picked up a piece of cloth from the desk behind him and held it up. The material was blue and emblazoned with three red lions running in a circle, as if trying to bite each other’s tails.

‘This is the standard of our regiment,’ Jhala said. ‘It represents the English, who have hearts of lions.’

Jack stared at the standard, unsure whether he was supposed to respond.

‘Are you a lion?’ Jhala asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And will you fight to the death to defend this?’ Jhala waved the cloth.

Jack wasn’t sure that he would, but he was certain what the reply should be. ‘Yes, sir.’

Jhala gave a slight smile. ‘Good.’ He placed the cloth back on the desk and nodded to the Sergeant Major. ‘Take him to the store and find him a tunic. And get his hair cut – it’s a filthy mess.’

Jack opened his eyes. Daylight filtered through the interwoven branches, twigs and leaves of the bivouac.

It took him a moment to realise what had happened.