Red Earth and Pouring Rain (19 page)

‘Eh, Iqbal Singh-ji,’ he called, ‘what happened to Hiranakashyapu? In the end?’

The Sikh was standing spraddle-legged on a parapet, urinating, enjoying the sight of his water curving through the sunlight
and splattering on the rocks a hundred feet below. ‘He died,’ he said. ‘You don’t know? He killed so many that he thought
nobody should worship anyone but him. But his son was a Vishnu-devotee, a most pious, priggish little brat, it sounds like.
So Hiranakashyapu told his sister Holika to burn little Prahlad, and, holding him, she jumped into the fire, but she burnt
instead. So then Hiranakashyapu drew his sword to kill the boy, and noticed Prahlad looking quite fearless, said, Are you
mad, Prahlad said, My Lord is everywhere he will protect, and Hiranakashyapu thumped a pillar saying, Oh really is he here,
and Vishnu emerged from the pillar, half-man, half-lion, at the hour of twilight, carried Hiranakashyapu to the lintel, so
that he was half indoors and half out, and tore him open.’

Thomas laughed, a small uncertain giggle, and then they both ducked to the ground as a dark object whistled down from the
sky, its shadow skimming over them; Thomas landed awkwardly, his body twisted, and looked up into the snarling face of a small
dog as it turned through the air, legs stiff and outstretched, it hit the ground and exploded, spraying black fluid and maggots.

’Sisterfuckers,’ the Sikh growled, rubbing at a stain on his pantaloons. ‘Motherfuckers.’

Thomas straightened up, clanking, and gingerly picked his way through the mess to where the dog lay, trailing entrails in
which white worms moved slowly; its lips were twisted back from the teeth, the eyes very black and quite impenetrable. ‘Very
close,’ he said. ‘Too close.’

‘They’re closer than I thought. They’ll be up here soon,’ the Sikh said. ‘It won’t be long now.’

So, in the height of that summer, in the time near the summer solstice, the Company began catapulting long-dead animal carcasses
into the fortress; rotting-skinned calves and evil-smelling goats dropped in long, high arcs, thumping into rocks and dry
grass. Now, disease spread; plagues raced through the stronghold, whittling down the already-denuded garrison; now, when red-hot
shot set fire to roofs, it fed unopposed, gulping down homes and shops. In his basement room,
Thomas was often awakened at night by the flat whump-whump-whump of mortars and confused shouting; he would twist on his charpoy,
his legs hanging over the lower edge, mumble, glance sleepily at the armour and arms distributed around the bed in concentric
circles (glinting, gleaming despite the darkness) and feeling a huge surge of satisfaction and confidence, fall back into
a sleep delightfully burdened by palanquin-riding princesses.

One evening, Thomas swaggered through the bazaar, armed at all points, his long hair oiled, eyes outlined with kajal, a pink
flower behind an ear; he walked past blackened gaps in the rows of shops, some still smoking, past empty houses, bedraggled
courtesans calling without enthusiasm or hope from upper-storey windows, squeaking pigs feeding on corpses, groups of tea-drinking
soldiers caught in that absolute silence that comes from absolute knowledge of impending disaster, streets clogged with debris,
weeping children, families staggering under the weight of their quickly-bundled possessions, packs of sleek white dogs, threatening
and feral.

‘Sahib. O Sahib. Wait.’

Thomas turned, flicking his hair over a shoulder; it was one of the many arms-sellers he had dealt with recently, a thin,
nervous man with Shaivite caste-marks on his forehead.

‘I am going, Sahib,’ he said. ‘We will try to get out, tonight. But before I go, I thought, I must see the Sahib, only he
will appreciate this. Look.’ He held out a two-and-a-half-foot length of heavy steel, worked at the top into curving petal-like
flanges, crowned with an octagonal spike at the top of the bud. ‘Look. It is less a mace, more a thing a woman might love
for its delicacy. Look at the workmanship of the handle. Look at the strength of the neck. One might be glad to fall under
a blow from this, one might consider oneself blessed.’

‘Indeed,’ said Thomas. ‘It is pleasing to the eyes, with the curve of these, the boss and then the heavy straight line of
the spike.’

‘I knew it. Only you could appreciate the worth of a piece like this. Call her Rose-of-the-Morning, Sahib. Bulbul-of-Heaven.’

‘Princess-of-the-Heart.’

‘Marvellous. Princess-of-the-Heart, indeed.’

‘How much?’

After the obligatory bargaining, Thomas carried his new possession
home, swinging it to and fro, listening to the faint but clear whistling of air between its blunt blades. That night, he slept
with it by his head, rubbing his palm over the cross-hatching on the hilt, liking its comfortable chill, and later turning,
in his sleep, to rest his head against it, to taste, inadvertently, the electric bitterness of the metal. He awoke, suddenly,
with dirt in his nostrils and mouth, ears ringing; there were voices, raised and hysterical, nearby, muffled by the yellow
haze of plaster and dust shaken loose from the walls; Thomas began to strap on his buckler.

‘Come, brother. It is time.’ Iqbal Singh emerged from the murk, tying the drawstring to his pants.

‘What was it?’

‘A mine under the East Gate. It vanished, I hear, the whole gate.’

‘Of course.’

They ran up a narrow staircase; outside, the sky was coloured with the first hint of grey to the east, silhouetting the rush
of figures, the faces of men, the rhythmic up-and-down of the battlements. ‘We live,’ Iqbal Singh said, ‘in very bad times.’

Then they rushed into the melêlée; in the jostling, heaving mass it was impossible to tell friend or foe, and so blows were
exchanged anonymously, randomly, and bodies moved under foot, writhing, suffocated; Thomas used his weight, pushing his way
through the crowd, flanked by Iqbal Singh, noting, curiously, the queer high-pitched sound emitted by the throng, its heavy,
not-unpleasant odour of perspiration and fear, and the momentary glimpses —in the jumping red light of flames, the quick hot
white flashes of pistol discharges —of bulging eyes, gaping mouths, hands, lips, elbows, eyebrows. Finally, they gasped for
breath at the gate of the Rani Mahal, at their accustomed post. Above them, a thick column of pitch-black smoke grew thicker
at the base, piling billow upon billow; the gate itself stood open, and a dozen men from the guard crouched by it, nervous
and indecisive; below, a dense, rippling line of flashes marked the enemy’s advance party as it ascended, rolling up the defenders.

‘Close it,’ Iqbal Singh shouted. ‘Close it, fools.’

They strained at the gate, which moved, creaking, slow; something rang against the arch above, sprinkling them with a stinging
cloud of marble chips, and a man dropped behind Thomas, exhaling breath in a
quick whine; the gate closed, they struggled with the huge rusted bolt which squeaked and fought them, dropping large brown
flakes on their feet, and just as it slid, protesting, through the first hasp, the gate sagged inward, reverberating like
a gigantic diaphragm from ramming blows and shot.

‘Leave it,’ Iqbal Singh said. The echoing drum-beat sound chased them as they ran along a circular, rising passage-way, overlooked
by balustrades and loopholed walls; then they were in the palace proper, racing through pillared halls and court-yards where
red and green parrots squawked and flapped and fell out of branches; a figure appeared in a doorway, an obese, finely-dressed
man holding a cavalry sabre awkwardly.

‘We’re your men,’ Thomas said.

‘Where are all the guards, all the rest?’ Iqbal Singh said.

‘No guards, it was all so sudden.’ He began to cry. The tears left shiny tracks down his puffy cheeks. ‘We didn’t even have
time to put by wood for jauhar, it was all so sudden, so they all went out to the balconies at the back.’

‘Fool’s errand we came on,’ Iqbal Singh said. ‘They can’t char themselves, the great Rajput ladies, so they’ll fly like little
birdies. Nothing to protect here, brother, let’s go home.’

But Thomas was already off, running, The Red One in his right hand and Princess-of-the-Heart in his left, and the others followed;
they bolted through carpeted living rooms, under huge crystal chandeliers, and over silk-laden beds in apartments, up flights
of stairs, past delicate stone screens, and then into a large hall —black-and-white tiles, Thomas saw in that first moment,
and on the wall a painting, a large painting, a dancing woman, musicians —where on the other side a large group of women clustered
about a series of balconies that opened out onto the valley below; he ran towards them, and seeing him come, one of them,
an old woman, with white hair, pale skin, raised her foot, put it on the sandstone railing running around a balcony, and stepped,
face quite without fear, into the air, and for a moment her yellow skirt, patterned with red, ballooned out around her, holding
her up, it seemed, but then she dropped out of sight. Shouting, Thomas ran along the edge of the hall, herding them away from
the balconies, away from the edge; he saw her and knew it was her, despite the voluminous
ghunghat veiling her face: she was motionless, facing a balcony, back to a pillar, clutching it; he ran up to her, saw her
head move beneath the cloth as she felt him approach, he reached up with the mace, notched a fold of the ghunghat with the
spike, pulled it away, it was her, as the cloth fell away from her head her eyes were quite without expression, the pupils
dilated, the blood rushed to her skin, reddening, the cloth fell, Thomas heard a roaring, smoke, masonry collapsed, the cloth
fell.

‘JAHAJ JUNG!’

Thomas turned, dazed, to see Uday Singh, his white beard blackened by soot, coming through a jagged hole in the wall in a
crouching run, followed closely by a squat, ruddy-faced European in a green coat; oily smoke poured through the gap in the
brick, sliding over the tiles; Uday moved sideways, crab-wise, relaxed but already stalking, presenting never more than a
profile closely guarded by the oscillating point of a sword.

‘A coincidence worthy of the old stories,’ he said, chuckling. ‘But I should have known I would find you in here, Jahaj Jung,
among the pretties.’

The European had stopped in the middle of the hall, his jaw working back and forth, sweat running down his face, his chest
pumping until it seemed he would burst out of his green coat.

‘Damn’ black nigger bastards,’ he said in English tinged strongly with a Scottish accent. ‘Get them away from the women, Uday
Singh.’

‘Yes, Skinner Sa’ab,’ Uday said, in English, and then switching to Urdu: ‘The firangi wants you away from the pretties.’ Uday
smiled. ‘Will you go, Jahaj Jung? I serve the English now, and I must make you go.’

Thomas, his attention still focused on her, saw, at the edges of his field of vision, men hanging back, staring at him with
fear and even awe, but even now he watched her, the mace lowered (the ghunghat dragged to the ground). She looked past him,
her eyes lowered, at the drop, at the valley beyond, the scattered trees, the brown fields, haze, heavy cumulus clouds massing
to the south.

‘Will you go?’

Thomas turned and leapt, without a word, covering the distance to Uday in a stride, mace rising across body and splintering
Uday’s sword on his parry, sending him stumbling back, sprawling, Thomas was over
him, a shoulder hit Skinner at the plexus, collapsed him like a sack, on, The Red One swung up, cut, men hesitated, retreated,
jostling and pushing to get out of the way, a gap opened, Iqbal Singh and the others followed, swinging, through the hole
in the wall, into a smoke-filled corridor, men falling rapidly as they ran, backs pierced and bloodied by swords, pikes, spears
(a long-ago rissaldar’s voice: ‘Remember, children, it is when you break and run, when you can’t see them, when you can’t
parry or thrust, that they’ll massacre you, cut you down…’). Afterwards he could never remember that corridor, he only remembered
stumbling into a stinking alley, and the sting of two long cuts on his torso, under his right arm, and a bloody gouge in his
thigh. They ran in a single file down the lane, and he went first amongst them, guiding them away from the wider streets,
and keeping to the close and narrow, but he did not know where he was going.

Then they heard horses screaming, a resonant blowing sound that hung among the houses. They found the stable easily enough,
behind a white palace, but inside there was the steady cracking noise of burning, and smoke, and the horses flung themselves
against wood, brick, stone. Thomas threw back a stall door, and around him men grabbed desperately at manes, and then he was
up, smooth muscle underneath, sliding, falling, but no, out of the door; in front of Thomas and Iqbal, a man lost his grip,
rolled on the horse’s back, clutching, disappeared underneath, and hooves bore down and impacted with the sound of tearing
cloth, and now they were racing downhill through back alleys and little-known lanes, and men threw themselves aside, no time
for even a cut. Thomas leaned over the horse’s neck, arm around it, Princess-of-the-Heart slung around his wrist by a leather
thong, froth covered the horse’s neck, flicked back into Thomas’ face, he tasted, cherished the animal; now the houses petered
out and the dusty slope ended in a bluff that dropped down a hundred feet into the moat, turn turn turn, and they rode along
parallel to the precipice but lancers spurred out of the town, cutting them off, and Thomas shouted, where, pulled the horse’s
mane, turn, tugging to the right, turn. He could see the shiny points of the lances, turn, ten-foot lances, come around, boy,
and the pursuers opened out into line, they were many, they rode outwards, flanking, a half-moon, a scythe, no escape, none,
but: the drop.

Thomas could feel his heart racing: Oh, come my lovely, come my
heart, old friend, we are for the cliff, the precipice, come my beautiful, turn again, quick quick quickly, and now nothing
impedes us, the summer has expended its dry poisonous malice, the monsoon rumbles again in the clouds, now the sky waits for
us. Thomas dropped his weapons, leaned over further and reached out and gently, as gently as he could, clapped his palms over
the horse’s eyes, no fear, and the edge raced up, swallowed them, unhesitating, and both man and animal screamed, full-throated.
They fell, all the smooth-muscled equine grace gone from the animal: it huddled like a child, limbs crossing each other. The
air pulled at them; Thomas opened his arms, extended his limbs, the wind stroked the hair away from his face and streamed
it behind him, he stretched his fingers, and below, the sinuous green form of the moat rotated, readying to receive him, and,
turning, Thomas fell close to the horse, and its huge brown eye watched him impassively, impartially, and he felt something
break in his chest, felt the bubbling heat of new birth, it took him so that he curled and stretched, felt no pain, no fear,
and still the calm golden eye, and he cried out I love you O I love you, and the water took them.