A Proper Education for Girls (36 page)

She passed a European officer, lying among the refuse in the middle of the passageway. His face was slathered with blood and brains so that it matched the color of his crimson uniform. Beside him sprawled a dead sepoy, his left arm quite gone. Only a mangled stump remained, projecting from the ragged shoulder of his military
tunic. Lilian looked away. She focused her mind on the
dak
bungalow, a place she had visited many times to see whether there had been any post from Alice. Dear Alice. What would
she
have done, had she been at her side, as she always used to be? Alice would have kept a clear head, no matter what. She would have made her way to the
dak
via the quietest streets, her pistol at the ready. She would have found Mr. Hunter and insisted that he help and she would brook no arguments from him. Alice had always had the measure of Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter is an adventurer
, she had said.
A self-interested man who knows how to get out of trouble as quickly and easily as possible. He will do anything to save his own skin
. Lilian found the memory of her sister's words unexpectedly comforting.

But the
dak
bungalow was in flames. A crowd of natives were gathered outside, cheering. A drunken
sepoy
brandishing a bottle of
arrack
stood on the chest of a dead officer to get a better view of the inferno. Lilian almost fainted at the sight. She swayed in her saddle but somehow managed to remain upright. The roof of the
dak
bungalow collapsed, releasing a whorl of dancing sparks into the smoky air.

Lilian resolved to return to the European cantonment. No doubt Mr. Hunter was still there, perhaps at that very moment devising a plan that would outwit the bloodthirsty Indians and lead everyone to safety. After all, he had always understood the natives better than anyone else (he had told her so himself on many occasions). Besides, who but her fellow Europeans would offer her sanctuary from the slaughter?

The
sepoy
standing on the dead officer was watching her suspiciously. His hand strayed to the knife he carried thrust into the belt of his trousers. He waved his bottle of
arrack
in Lilian's direction and screamed at her to drink to the end of the
Sircar'
s rule.

“Shabash!”
shouted Lilian feebly. “Death to the
Sircar
!
”
She brandished her cutlass and fired her pistol into the air. This display seemed to satisfy the man, and he turned his attention to jumping up and down on the officer's chest like a monkey on an organ.

M
R.
H
UNTER WAS
hardly out of the European cantonment before he was set upon by a band of armed
sepoys
. He just had time to curse his own stupidity before something cracked him on the back of the head and he slipped from the saddle onto the ground.

He came to lying on his back in a ditch at the roadside. His head was pounding, his vision blurred. How long had he been lying there? He had no idea. He struggled unsteadily to his feet. The sky appeared to be almost dark, though whether this was due to smoke (which he could now taste on the air and which made his eyes smart and his throat tickle), or simply the approach of nightfall, or perhaps even an optical illusion created by the blow to the skull he had sustained, he was not sure. He put a hand to his head. His hair was sticky with blood at the back, and a torrent of the stuff had poured from a cut above his eye down his face and onto his shirt. Mr. Hunter pulled the filthy shirt over his head gingerly. Blood was still running from his hairline into his eyes, and he tore the shirt up and wrapped it around his head in a makeshift bandage. His new calfskin breeches were brown with dust and ripped extravagantly at the thigh. Every bone in his body ached. His head felt as though a cannon was going off inside it.

The only reason he was not dead, he decided, was because his attackers had erroneously assumed that the blow to his head had been fatal. He looked about. His horse was gone, his bearer had fled, his
sa'is
was lying facedown a few yards farther up the road. From the curious and unnatural angle of the man's body it was clear that he had not been as lucky as his master. Mr. Hunter groaned as the world began to heave and spin around him. He sank back down onto the dusty road and put his head between his knees.

The sound of approaching horses riding at a gallop and the shouts of men echoed through the twilight to startle Mr. Hunter out of his stupor. He staggered to his feet and dived back into the ditch at the roadside as a gang of
sepoys
thundered past, their cutlasses
waving in their hands, their faces triumphant. Their horses were laden, though with what, exactly, Mr. Hunter could not tell, until a bundle carried precariously behind one of the riders' saddles came undone, scattering its glittering contents about the road. A silver teapot bounced into the bushes. A pair of sugar tongs and a silver milk jug landed beside the dead
sa'is
. An ornate silver picture frame skidded through the dust, landing inches from Mr. Hunter's hiding place. The
sepoys
did not stop to pick up their fallen booty but disappeared in the direction of the native town.

Mr. Hunter lurched out of the ditch once more, coughing and choking on the dust thrown up by the drumming of hooves on the sun-baked earth. It settled thickly onto his bloody hair and face and he scrubbed at it crossly, trying to get it out of his eyes and nose, but succeeding only in mixing it into a terra-cotta-colored paste. He spat a mouthful of blood and mud onto the ground. How was he going to find Lilian without a horse? His progress would be impossibly slow and he would be at risk from footpads, roaming bands of looters, or whole regiments of furious
sepoys …
The sound of approaching hooves sent him diving for cover once again.

Mr. Hunter scrambled back into the ditch and peeped out. Around the corner, heading to the cantonment, came a single rider. The man's clothes were bloodstained, his turban filthy about his head, his
pyjama
trousers blotched with ominous rust-colored stains. He rode low over his horse's neck, clinging to the mane with inexpert hands as he drove the animal forward furiously. Mr. Hunter swallowed. Even from his place in the ditch he could see the man's eyes blazing with rage, his gleaming teeth clenched tightly about the blade of a knife. And yet it was only a single cutthroat, Mr. Hunter said to himself, a small, thin cutthroat at that, and one who seemed somewhat uncomfortable astride a galloping pony. There was a chance, he decided suddenly, if he was swift and strong, that he might unhorse the fellow and steal his mount.

Later, Mr. Hunter decided that the blow he had taken to the head must have addled his brains. After all, throwing oneself into the pathway of a charging horse ridden by a furious and well-armed
mutineer was an act of recklessness and stupidity. Nonetheless, having concluded that anything was possible, and with only a split second to make his move, Mr. Hunter reared up from his ditch and launched himself at the passing rider.

L
ILIAN ALMOST DROPPED
the knife from between her teeth in astonishment as the filth-covered
fakir
sprang up at her from his roadside bed. She tried to swerve around him, to avoid his outstretched hands, but his fingers closed about her boot like a snare and she was almost dragged from her pony onto the ground. The animal reared and wheeled in the dust.

Mr. Hunter roared victoriously, oblivious to the hooves that were plunging up and down inches from his face. He grabbed hold of Lilian's waist.

She twisted from side to side trying to dislodge him without falling herself; trying to get her pistol out and point it at his face without dropping her reins. His head was sheathed in the tattered remnants of a stained and foul turban, the face below a mask of clay. His rags flapped like bandages about his shoulders. How big and strong he seemed for a supposedly half-starving mendicant! But then these roadside
fakirs
were always being fed by locals, thought Lilian distractedly as she tried to slice the fellow's fingers off, so it was perhaps no surprise that some of them were in better health than they pretended.

Mr. Hunter hauled at Lilian's legs, trying to pull her down from the pony and, at the same time, to drag himself up. The pony screamed, its eyes rolling in its head. Lilian gasped. She was slipping down! If she could just get a grip on her rifle … There! Lilian rammed the butt of Aunt Lambert's rifle into
the fakir s
grinning face. He slithered onto the ground, his hands to his nose. Lilian did not wait to see if he got up but dug her heels into her pony's sides and took off toward the cantonment.

E
VEN BEFORE SHE
had rounded the final corner toward the Europeans' bungalows Lilian could see the flames against the darkening sky. Mr. Vine's house was the first she passed. His possessions—those precious things he had brought from England—were scattered like the beached booty of a wrecked ship. A wall clock was protruding from a flower bed, a portrait of the young Queen upside down in a gardenia bush. The thick claret-colored curtains the magistrate had ordered directly from London, and which had once hung proudly in his dining room, were piled in a heap in the middle of his garden. The ground around these relics appeared to be scattered with a thousand multicolored fragments that glowed and flickered like jewels in the light of the inferno that was Mr. Vine's bungalow.

Lilian dismounted. She picked up a handful of what appeared to be shards of pottery. It was pottery thickly glazed in vivid turquoises, reds and yellows, rich greens and violent cobalt blues. Here and there Lilian could distinguish the disembodied fragment of an animal, a plant, or an insect: a sliver of emerald seaweed, an entire glazed bumblebee. Lilian recognized the shattered remains of Mr. Vine's collection of Herbert Minton majolica. It had been smashed into tiny pieces and scattered like birdseed into the dirt.

Lilian scrambled back onto her pony. Already the roof of Mr. Vine's bungalow was falling in, sending an explosion of orange sparks bursting into the charred and whirling darkness. Mr. Vine himself was nowhere to be seen, though whether this was a good or a bad sign Lilian had no idea. She rubbed the smoke from her eyes and rode on.

She made her way stealthily past the Europeans' bungalows. Each one appeared deserted—windows stood open with the lights inside blazing uselessly; doors were wrenched off entirely and tossed aside, the interior an ominous flickering darkness as fires within danced and smoldered. Mr. Ravelston's house, like the magistrate's, was completely ablaze. The hospital, on the far side of the
maidan
, was also burning. Lilian had expected to find some activity, at least some evidence that the Europeans were defending themselves: the construction of makeshift barricades, perhaps (good use
could surely have been made of all those ponderous sideboards); the sound of defensive musket fire; the occasional boom of a cannon, even. Instead, there was nothing. No one appeared to have made any attempt to defend anything—until it was too late, of course. But here was a house whose lights were on and whose door was closed. Perhaps everyone had taken refuge there? Lilian halted outside Mrs. Birchwoode's bungalow and dismounted. Whether the Europeans of Kushpur were inside or not was impossible to tell. She peered anxiously into the spark-filled evening for signs of movement. Seeing nothing and no one, she climbed stealthily onto the veranda and opened the door.

The place was silent, but Lilian gripped her pistol nonetheless as she crossed the threshold. She turned the corner toward the drawing room, her trembling finger tightening on the trigger. All at once she caught sight of a movement out of the corner of her eye. She swung round with a cry to behold a man, crouched as though about to spring. Lilian had time only to take in his staring eyes, his filthy face below a dirty turban and the rifle he was pointing at her … She blasted Mr. Gilmour's pistol into his face with a scream, shattering Mrs. Birchwoode's hall mirror, into a thousand spears of silver. The fragments cascaded, with a sound like an overturned knife box, onto the floor.

Lilian's hands began to shake uncontrollably. She stepped forward and poked her head into Mrs. Birchwoode's drawing room.

The sight that greeted her sent her staggering back into the hall as though she had been struck in the face. She screwed her eyes shut, but the picture seemed to have been burned onto her retinas as though onto one of her sister's photographic plates. That brief glimpse had been enough to show Lilian that everyone present was dead. She knew this because each person there—Mrs. Birchwoode, Mrs. Toomey, Miss Forbes, and Miss Bell—was seated about the room in her customary pose. Their teacups were before them on the tray, and their heads had been cut from their shoulders and placed in their laps.

Lilian stumbled back down the hallway. Had no one been
spared? What had happened to Mr. Birchwoode, Mr. Ravelston, and Mr. Toomey? Where were Captains Wheeler, Forbes, and Lewis? Surely they had been on hand to help? It was true that the sound of musket fire could still be heard echoing across the cantonment. Perhaps they were fighting in the native town with the rest of the European officers. What about Mr. Vine and Dr. Mossly? She found she could hardly breathe with fear. Where was Mr. Hunter when she needed him? Lilian burst out onto Mrs. Birchwoode's veranda, gasping for air.

And there was that
fakir
again! There was no mistaking his tattered headdress and torn clothing as he struggled to mount her pony.

Lilian leveled her pistol at Mr. Hunter as he tried in vain to get his foot into a stirrup as the pony reared and danced.

“Get away from my horse or I'll kill you!” she screamed.

Without waiting for a response Lilian pulled the trigger. A whiff of powder and a deafening roar filled the air. When she opened her eyes the
fakir
had gone.