Zemindar (43 page)

‘An invitation,’ he answered laconically, putting the paper in his pocket. ‘To rebellion!’

I was glad that Emily had already walked on into the drawing-room.

Later that same night I sat alone in the long drawing-room turning over the events of the day. I believe I felt rather smug. No one could deny that I had made a startling, even upsetting, discovery regarding Mr Erskine, yet after my initial panic-stricken escape from the old tower, I had managed to conduct myself so that neither Emily or Charles had any suspicion that I was in an unusual state of mind. In handing me my sketchbook after dinner, Mr Erskine had certainly reduced me to confusion for a moment, probably deliberately, but I had recovered myself pretty smartly.

He had bade us goodnight at his usual hour, and I had watched him leave the room with an inward smile at the innocence of my cousins who still believed he was going to his library to study Persian poetry. Emily and Charles had retired early: Charles was visibly fatigued after his three days in the open and Emily wanted to talk over with him Oliver’s suggestion regarding going to Mussoorie rather than to Lucknow.

Left alone, I tried to keep my mind on the book I was reading, a travel tale by a Frenchman named Chevenet. I had chosen it out of perversity, since Oliver, who was in the library at the time, had motioned me away from the works in French, indicating that I would find easier entertainment among the volumes in my own tongue. He had been quite right; the book, besides being in French, was tedious, about an India long gone and never very real. Of course I had not allowed myself to be advised, though now I was prepared to admit I was happy to be at the end of it. Satisfied that I knew enough of the contents to answer any suspicious inquisition my host might put me through, I shut it with relief and decided to find something more congenial to take with me to my bed.

Picking up the lamp from the table beside me, I made my way down the long corridor to the library. The big house was very quiet and only a couple of sleepy servants remained, dozing on their haunches outside the dining-room, waiting to extinguish the lights in the drawing-room when I had retired. I felt guilty at keeping them up, and quickened my pace. The lamp I carried created grotesque shadows among the horns and heads above me, glanced off glassy eyes and revealed for a second as I passed them old, dim portraits and time-darkened landscapes of far-away places. Emily and Charles were probably asleep, and Mr Erskine was no doubt in the old tower. I felt so sure of this deduction that I did not bother to knock, but turned the doorknob and entered my host’s sanctum with an easy step.

I stopped abruptly.

Lamplight glimmered at the far end of the room, its inadequate glow merely enhancing the gloom around it.

‘Now what the devil do you want?’ asked Mr Erskine sharply, straightening up from where he had been bending over a figure recumbent on a long leather-covered couch. ‘You have the damndest way of walking in where you are not wanted!’

Appalled at what I might now have discovered—was it possible he would bring his mistress into the house?—I was for a moment dumb.

‘I … I’m sorry, Oliver,’ I mumbled, backing out of the door. ‘I had no idea you would be here. I just came to change my book, but I can do it in the morning.’

‘No,’ he said curtly, ‘now that you are here, you can help. Women are supposed to be good at this sort of thing. Shut that damned door and bring the lamp with you.’

I shut the door and put the book on a table, then approached the sofa towards which Oliver had again turned his attention. He had taken off his coat and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow.

‘I was just about to start on him myself, but your hands are probably gentler than mine. We have to clean up this leg.’

In the darkness behind the sofa, I discerned the short figure of Toddy-Bob. He came forward to take my lamp, and I glimpsed a face unfamiliarly pale.

‘This fool has a girl’s stomach for blood,’ Oliver commented drily. ‘Not that this is a pleasant sight. Do you think you can manage?’

Toddy held up the lamp and revealed a figure, small, shrivelled and quite unconscious, stretched out on the sofa. Though I had never seen the man at close quarters something convinced me that this was the companion of Toddy-Bob’s midnight and unexplained departure on the night of the duck shoot. The dark face had a ghastly greenish tinge; his eyes were closed and his mouth open, the lips drawn back over yellowed teeth. He wore a dirty loincloth and nothing else. His right leg was a mass of blood from thigh to ankle.

Oliver watched me closely as I examined the little man; he probably expected me to be as nauseated as Toddy.

‘Warm water!’ I commanded before I could think better of it. ‘And a sheet, a clean sheet.’

‘We have them here.’

I put part of the sheet under the bloody limb, tore up the rest and set to work to clean away the blood. It was congealed and difficult to move. I was relieved that the man was unconscious and therefore oblivious to pain. As I worked, I began to see that the whole leg was marked with a series of cuts, forming a sort of trelliswork of diamond shapes on the dark skin. Oliver knelt beside me, handing me clean swabs and wringing out the soiled ones in water.

‘This is extraordinary,’ I said, after we had worked in silence for some time. ‘What could have caused such injuries, they are almost regular? And look how one runs into another all the way up.’

‘It’s kite string, miss,’ said Toddy in a depressed voice. ‘Very vicious way of doin’ a body a injury! Very vicious!’

‘Kite string? But that couldn’t possibly cut a man to this extent?’

‘The string used for fighting kites does,’ said Oliver quietly. ‘This is a favoured method of repaying a score around here. Painful, but not necessarily fatal. The string, they call it
manja
, is waxed, then drawn through powdered glass. The glass adheres to the string and, when the kites are in flight, the object is to cut down your opponent’s with your own.’

‘But how did this happen?’

‘I imagine he was knocked unconscious and then the
manja
was wrapped around his leg in the manner you have observed. Usually they do both legs; sometimes the arms as well and tie the hands together. When the victim comes round, he tries to struggle free and each movement, because of the way the damned stuff is wound, tightens the knots, making the string bite into the flesh. The glass rubs off into the wounds, and the resulting sensation is not to be recommended. Fortunately Ungud’s enemies appear to have been interrupted before they could finish the job. Or perhaps they only wanted to warn him of what might happen in the future. I don’t know. The
thanadar
of Shahnagar brought him here; he had managed to crawl to a track.’

‘But why did they do it to him, whoever they were? Could it have been
dacoits
?’

‘Perhaps. And the why I have yet to discover. Perhaps a family feud, a debt, even because of a woman, I suppose. Or maybe because someone disapproves of his association with Hassanganj. He is an Army pensioner, but I have employed him for some time as a messenger. He’s a good man and I don’t want him crippled …’

‘I have nearly finished, as you can see, though if there is glass in these cuts, it is going to be difficult to get them to heal. Now it ought to be bandaged, but first have you some sort of salve or ointment?’

‘There are dozens of pots and jars in the still room. Come and see if you can find anything suitable. My grandmother put them up a long time ago, so God knows what good they are.’

We returned to the library with a pot marked, euphemistically enough, ‘Soothing Unguent’. It smelt clean and pleasant and, since I found nothing more specific, all I could do was apply it and hope for the best. As I worked my fingers gently over the poor lacerated flesh, the man stirred, moaned and then opened his eyes.

‘Good, he’s coming round. Toddy, the brandy!’

Toddy-Bob came forward with a glass and Oliver held up the man’s head and poured a little brandy between his teeth. Then he laid him carefully back on the cushions. ‘He’ll do now,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘but we must keep him still while that leg heals. Food, Toddy! See what they can produce in the kitchen. And hot milk.’

‘There, that’s done!’ I sat back on my heels and surveyed my handiwork. The leg was now loosely bandaged, and only a few small spots of blood oozed through the linen. ‘Can you get him to a doctor?’

‘If it’s necessary. But he won’t like it.’

‘I’d be happier if he had professional attention. That glass …’

‘Well, let’s wait a couple of days and see how he gets on. He’ll be a damned sight more frightened of a doctor than of the pain, and they have extraordinary powers of recuperation.’

‘
Sahib
.’ A faint whisper from the sofa drew our attention and Oliver bent over while Ungud spoke a few words in his own tongue.

‘He wants me to thank you,’ he said, turning to me. ‘He says the
Angrezi mem
has given him healing and he will be quite well in a few days.’ Oliver got to his feet. ‘The curious thing is that if he has made up his mind to recover, he will do it. He’ll not need a doctor, you’ll see!’

‘I hope not, but you’ll have to watch for fever.’

‘Come,’ said Oliver. ‘We can leave him to Toddy and Ishmial now. They’ll find quarters for him when he is rested.’ He picked up the lamp and preceded me out of the room.

‘I’m going to have a nightcap. Join me!’ he ordered, and as we passed the two sleepy house servants, he commanded that decanters and glasses be brought into the drawing-room. When they had arrived, he poured out two brandies and, though I seldom touched spirits, I accepted mine gladly.

‘
I
must thank you, too, Laura,’ he said, standing and sipping his drink while I thankfully took a seat. His voice was serious as his eyes met mine, and all at once I was overcome by embarrassment at my memory of the afternoon. Perhaps he realized it; his lips twitched, but he was considerate enough to walk away from me to the empty fireplace.

‘Nonsense. There was nothing else I could do.’

‘You could have fainted. I gather young ladies make a practice of it in … unpleasant situations. How did you know so well what to do?’

‘Common sense, and I have lived in a large family where cuts and scrapes were frequent.’

‘It didn’t … offend you?’

‘Offend me? Oh, you mean … Of course not! His blood is the same colour as mine, even if his skin is not. What an absurd suggestion!’

‘Yes,’ he agreed thoughtfully, and sat down on one of the little gilt chairs that fitted him so inadequately. ‘And yet, would Emily have come forward as readily?’

‘Emily would not have known what to do. She has never had to consider other people’s misfortunes or minor injuries.’

‘And you have?’

‘I am older than she is. I have a different temperament. Different expectations and duties.’

‘You have indeed. Forgive me if I say it, but you are a very uncommon young woman. You meet life, instead of running away from it. I believe you actually enjoy meeting it, even in head-on collision. As this afternoon.’

I was left speechless by the man’s sheer barefaced effrontery.

‘Oh, you bolted of course. The only way out for you, after all. But I don’t believe you were nearly as shocked as you should have been. You met me at dinner with remarkable composure.’

‘No other course was open to me!’

‘Perhaps not. Yet I half expected you to take Charles into your confidence.’

‘I considered doing so,’ I muttered, angry with myself for prolonging the conversation, ‘but it is no concern of mine, and … and I believe the others would have been upset.’

‘Very likely,’ he agreed. ‘My brother might even have taken some regrettable step like leaving Hassanganj in protest. And certainly, as far as Charles and his somewhat optimistic expectations go, that would be unfortunate.’

I said nothing.

‘If outraged convention impelled him to leave Hassanganj, you see, he could hardly hope to be made my heir. Now could he?’

‘What makes you think he hopes that?’

‘Oh, come! My mother’s letters do more than merely hint at the desirability of such an outcome. Besides, bridal journeys more usually confine themselves to the beauties of the Italian lakes or the Rhenish castles. And neither Charles nor Emily are subject to—er—shall we say, intellectual curiosity. They could both exist quite happily without a closer knowledge of India. But India held the bait. So to India they came!’

‘You are a cynic!’

‘No, a realist.’

‘But if you know all this, or suspect it, why do you keep us here? Why don’t you send them—and me—packing? And you’ve always been so pointedly considerate of Emily?’

‘Why should I send them packing, as you so dramatically put it? I’m not bothered about how much they fool themselves; their rather juvenile hopes do me no wrong. And as to Emily—well, I suppose I am sorry for her.’

‘Why should you be sorry for Emily? She has everything!’

‘No, my dear, you think so because she has everything you fancy you want. Not the same at all.’

His narrowed amber eyes met mine for a long, cool second, but I would not be drawn.

‘Oh, of course I know she can be a little termagant. She
is
to you often enough, and I greatly enjoy the sight of you struggling to control your tongue and preserve the impression of cousinly loving kindness which you value so much. She’s spoilt, over-indulged. She hasn’t the brains of a wren, and God knows, I’d hate to have to live with her for the rest of my days, even more than Charles does!’

‘Charles does not …!’ I broke in unwisely.

‘Oh, but he does! And as I say, I can’t blame him. But she is unhappy … and defenceless. Perhaps I’m sentimental, more sentimental than you will credit, but I think the Emilys of this world should be protected a little—helped. If she could, would Emily not find some other way to assert her rights than in using you spitefully? Besides, it takes very little to make a woman like her feel important and necessary, but Charles apparently is not capable of that little. A notable lack of gallantry. And of common sense!’