Far Pavilions (5 page)

These and other comforting conjectures served to blunt the sharp edge of panic, and she could no longer hear the tumult of the city, for though the faint current of air that blew off the wet sand and the winding reaches of the Jumna River was not strong enough to raise the dust that lay thick on the highroad, it was still sufficient to stir the tops of the elephant grass and fill her ears with a soft, murmurous rustling. ‘We shall leave when the child awakes,’ thought Sita. But even as she thought it the illusion of peace was shattered. A savage tremor swept across the plain like an invisible wave, shuddering through the grass and rocking the very earth beneath her, and on its heels came an appalling crash of sound that split the murmurous silence of the hot afternoon as a thunderbolt will split a pine tree.

The violence of that sound jerked Ash from sleep and brought Sita to her feet, rigid with shock, and peering through the shivering grasses they saw a vast column of smoke rising up above the distant walls of Delhi: an awesome, writhing pillar, mushroom-topped and terrifying in the blaze of the afternoon sunlight. They had no idea what it meant, and never knew that what they had seen was the explosion of the Delhi magazine, blown up by a handful of defenders to prevent it falling into the hands of a rioting mob.

Hours later the smoke still hung there, rose-coloured now in the golden sunset; and when at last Sita and the child ventured out of their hiding place the first rays of the low moon had touched its fading outline with silver.

To turn back now, when they were almost within reach of their goal, was out of the question; though had there been any other way of reaching the cantonments, Sita would have taken it. But she did not dare attempt to ford the Jumna, and there was no other bridge for many miles. They would have to cross by the bridge of boats, and they had done so, hurrying across it in the grey starlight in the wake of a wedding party, to be challenged and halted by armed men on the far side. A lone woman and child being of little account, they had been allowed to pass while the sentries interrogated the wedding guests; and it was from the babble of questions and answers that Sita gained her first information as to the events of the day.

Hilary had been right. And so had Akbar Khan. There had been too many grievances that had been disregarded, too many injustices that had not been recognized and put right, and men would not endure such things for ever. The breaking point had been a petty one: a matter of greased cartridges that had been issued to the Bengal Army for use in the new rifles, of which the grease was suspected of being a mixture of cow and pig fat – the touch of the first destroying the caste of a Hindu and the latter defiling a Mohammedan. But it was an excuse only.

Ever since the day, half a century earlier, when mutiny and bloodshed had followed the Company's attempt to enforce the wearing of a leather stock and a new form of headdress on the troops at Vellore in Madras, the sepoys had suspected a plot aimed at depriving them of caste – that most cherished of all Hindu institutions. The mutiny of Vellore had been put down with swiftness and ferocity, as had other and similar insurrections in the years that followed. But the Company had failed to read the writing on the wall, and were indignant at the outcry against the greased cartridges.

In Barrackpore an angry sepoy, Mangal Pandy of the 34th Native Infantry, having urged his comrades to revolt, had fired at and wounded the British Adjutant. He had subsequently been hanged, while his fellow sepoys who had watched in silence had been deprived of their arms. The regiment itself had been disbanded, and faced with further dissatisfaction the Governor-General had at last issued an order withdrawing the new cartridge. But by that time it was too late, for the sepoys looked upon the order as proof that their suspicions had been correct, and far from easing the tension, it increased it to danger-point. Outbreaks of arson were reported from all over India, but in spite of the explosiveness of the situation and the fact that knowledgeable men were only too well aware of impending disaster, the Commanding Officer of the 3rd Cavalry, stationed at Meerut, had elected to teach his regiment a lesson by insisting that they use the disputed cartridges. Eighty-five of his sowars
*
having firmly, though courteously, refused to do so, they had been arrested, court-martialled and sentenced to hard-labour for life.

General Hewitt, obese, lethargic and rising seventy, had reluctantly ordered a parade of the entire Meerut Brigade at which the sentences were read aloud, and the eighty-five men publicly stripped of their uniforms and fitted with iron leg-shackles before being led away to life imprisonment. But that long-drawn, inglorious parade proved to be an even greater mistake than the harshness of the sentences, for the sympathy of the watching crowd had been aroused by the sight of the manacled sowars, and all that night men in the barracks and bazaars of Meerut seethed with shame and rage and plotted revenge. With the morning the storm that had threatened for so long broke at last: a mob of furious sepoys attacked the gaol, released the prisoners and turned on the British, and after a day of riot, murder and violence the sowars of the 3rd Cavalry had fired the looted bungalows and ridden to Delhi to raise the standard of revolt and place their sabres at the service of Bahadur Shah, titular King of Delhi and last of the Moguls. It was these men whom Sita had seen in the dawn, and recognized, with terror and foreboding, as the messengers of disaster.

The Mogul, it seemed, had not at first believed them, for there were many British regiments in Meerut, and he had hourly expected to see them hastening in pursuit of the mutineers. Only when none appeared did he become convinced that the troopers of the 3rd Cavalry had spoken no more than the truth when they asserted that all the Sahib-log in Meerut were dead; and this being so, word had gone out for a similar massacre of all Europeans in Delhi. Some of the Sahibs had shut themselves into the magazine, and when it became clear that they could no longer hold it, they had blown it up, and themselves with it. Others had been slaughtered by their troops, or by the mobs which had risen in support of the heroes of Meerut and were still hunting down stray Europeans in the streets of the city…

Listening to this tale of the day's doings, Sita had snatched the child away from the light of the flaring torches and dragged him into the shadows, terrified that he might be recognized as
Angrezi
(English) and cut down by the swords of the bridge guard. The roar of the mob and the crash and crackle of burning buildings carried a clearer warning than any words of the dangers to be encountered in the city, and turning from the Calcutta Gate she scurried away into the darkness in the direction of the Water Bastion, keeping to the narrow strip of waste ground that lay between the river and the walls of Delhi.

The ground was rough and strewn with rocks and other pitfalls, and Ash's short legs, trotting beside her, tired early. But by now the moon was up, and the reflected glare of burning houses filled the night with a sunset brightness. They had covered less than half a mile when they came across a strayed donkey wandering aimlessly among the boulders and the rubbish dumps, and appropriated it. Its owner was probably a
dhobi
or a grass-cutter who had tied it insecurely or, hastening to the city to take part in the looting of European-owned shops and houses, had temporarily forgotten it. But to Sita it was a gift from the gods and she accepted it as such. The little creature stood patiently while she placed Ash on its back and mounted behind him, and it had obviously been accustomed to far heavier loads, for at the touch of her heel it trotted briskly forward, keeping to some unseen track that wound between the rocks and scrub and rubbish on the glacis beyond the city ditch.

The donkey's hooves made very little noise on the sandy ground, and Sita's wine-coloured cotton sari was lost among the shadows; but there were men on the walls that night who were suspicious of any sound or movement, and twice harsh voices challenged them and shots ricochetted off the stones at their feet or whined viciously overhead to splash into the river. Then at last they were past the Water Bastion and the Counter-Scarp, and picking their way across the short stretch of open ground that separated the Kashmir Gate from the dark, friendly thickets of the Kudsia Bagh.

A final spatter of shots followed but did not harm them, and ten minutes later they were among trees, with Delhi left behind them – a black, uneven fringe of walls and battlements, rooftops and trees, spiked with the slim minarets of mosques and thrown into sharp silhouette by the glow of the fires. To the right lay the river, while ahead and to the left loomed the long dark line of the Ridge, a natural barrier of rock that lay between the cantonments and the city.

There were always lights in the cantonments, in bungalows, barracks and messes, and the quarters of the camp-followers. The glow they made in the night sky was a familiar sight, but tonight it was much brighter and less constant, waxing and waning as though there were fires there too. The Sahib-log, thought Sita, must have caused bonfires to be lighted around the cantonment area to prevent any attack being launched under cover of darkness, which seemed to her a sensible idea; though it was going to make her own progress more hazardous, for there were armed men on the road that linked the city to the Ridge and the cantonments, hurrying figures on foot and on horseback whom she suspected of being mutineers or looters. The sooner she got the child and herself to the safety of Abuthnot-Sahib's bungalow the better, but it might be wiser to wait here where the trees and thickets offered a hiding place, until there was less activity on the cantonment road.

The donkey jibbed suddenly, almost unseating her. It stood still, blowing loud snuffing breaths of alarm, and when she urged it forward with her heel, it backed instead, so that she was forced to dismount.

‘
Dekho!
’ (Look!) said Ash, whose eyesight in the dark was almost as good as the donkey's. ‘There is someone there in the bushes.’

His voice was interested rather than alarmed, and if he had not spoken before it was only because he had never been much given to talking, except, on occasions, to Akbar Khan. The shots and the shouting had excited him, but no more than that, for Uncle Akbar had taken him out shooting before he could walk, and the only alarming thing about the present situation was Sita's fear; and the fact that she either would not or could not explain their altered circumstances and why everyone he had known in all his short life, everyone but herself, had suddenly deserted him. But like most children the world over, he was resigned to the curious behaviour of grown-ups and accepted it as part of the scheme of things. He knew now that Sita was once again afraid, and this time of the person in the bushes: the donkey was too, and Ash patted the little animal's quivering back and said consolingly: ‘
Daro mut
,’ (Do not fear), ‘it is only a memsahib who is asleep.’

The woman in the bushes lay in a curious attitude, as though she had crawled through the tangled undergrowth on hands and knees and had fallen asleep, exhausted. The red light of burning buildings, glinting through the leaves, showed her to be an excessively stout lady wearing a whalebone crinoline and a number of petticoats under a voluminous dress of grey and white striped bombazine which made her appear even stouter. But she was not asleep. She was dead. She must, thought Sita, shrinking back from that vast, silent shape, be one of the Sahib-log who had attempted to escape the massacre in the city and had died of terror or heart-failure, for she bore no sign of any wound. Perhaps she too had been trying to reach the cantonments, and perhaps there were other English fugitives hiding in the shadows – or mutineers, hunting them down.

The latter thought was an alarming one, but a moment's consideration convinced Sita that any sounds of pursuit would be clearly audible among the thickets of the ruined garden, and that no search would be undertaken without torches to light the way. The night was quiet and the only movements she could hear came from the direction of the road. They could safely wait here.

Tethering the donkey so that it could not wander away, she made a nest among the grasses for the child, and having fed him with the last hoarded fragments of a chuppatti, lulled him to sleep with the whispered story of the valley among the mountains where they would one day live in that flat-roofed house among the fruit trees, and keep a goat and a cow, a puppy and a kitten… ‘And the donkey,’ said Ash drowsily. ‘We must take the donkey.’

‘Assuredly we will take the donkey, he shall help us carry water jars from the river; and wood for our fire, for when night falls it is cool in the high valleys – cool and pleasant, and the wind that blows through the forests smells of pine-cones and snow and makes a sound that says “
Hush – Hush –Hush
”…’ Ash sighed happily and was asleep.

Sita waited patiently hour after hour until the glow in the sky died down and the stars began to pale, and then smelling the approach of dawn, she roused the sleeping child and stole out of the Kudsia Bagh to complete the last lap of their long journey to the cantonments of Delhi.

There was no one on the road now. It lay grey and empty and deep in dust, and though the air was cool from the river and the long reaches of wet sand, it was tainted with the smell of smoke and a faint reek of corruption, while the silence magnified every small sound: the snap of a dead twig underfoot, the click of a stone struck by the donkey's hooves and Sita's own short uneven breathing. It seemed to her that their progress must be audible a mile away, and she began to urge the donkey to greater speed, kicking its furry sides with her bare heels and exhorting it in a breathless whisper to hurry – hurry.

The last time she and the child had come this way they had driven in a carriage and the distance between the Kashmir Gate and the cantonments had seemed a very short one; but now it seemed endless, and long before they reached the crest of the ridge the sky was grey with the first hint of morning, and the black, shapeless masses to the left and right of the road had resolved themselves into rocks and stunted thorn trees. It was easier once the road began to descend; they made better time on the downward slope, and the silence reassured Sita. If the inhabitants of the cantonment could sleep so peacefully there could be nothing wrong and the trouble must be over – or else it had never reached here.