The Faraway Drums (31 page)

Thirty miles north of the city the train had been halted at a wayside platform and Farnol had gone back down the train to the last carriage. He called Karim Singh and Ahearn out into the conductor’s space at the rear of the carriage and asked the conductor to go elsewhere for a few minutes. The latter did so without a word, but his expression said enough about what he felt on the subject of being ordered out of his space on his train.

“That chap Mr. Monday,” said Karim, “he’s been no trouble, sahib. I think Private Ahearn and I are wasting our marvellous skills just keeping an eye on him.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too, yes,” said Ahearn, trying to look possessed of marvellous skills. He could lie and cheat and malinger with the best of them, but he had an idea those talents would not get him far in Farnol’s Horse.

The train started off again, but Farnol decided to remain where he was. He wanted to make sure
that
he would be seeing as much as possible of Bridie during her stay in Delhi. Sankar’s plot, of course, permitting.

“I think you can forget Mr. Monday now. Get back into your hill dress, Karim, and when we get to Delhi I want you to shadow Prince Sankar everywhere he goes. Keep as close to him as his shadow, but don’t let him know you’re following him. Has he had a good look at you?”

“I don’t think so, sahib.”

“Well, don’t let him. Stay on his tail. I’ll send Private Ahearn out each evening to meet you at the main gate to the Red Fort and you’ll give him your report.”

“Am I going to miss seeing the regiment in the parade, sahib?”

“That will depend on whether Prince Sankar wants to see the parade. I’m sorry, Karim, but I’m afraid we’re going to Delhi for more than just a social visit now.”

Then he went down the corridor and knocked on the door of Bridie’s compartment. “It’s me, Clive.”

Bolts were slid back and Bridie and Lady Westbrook looked out at him. They had the pinched, irritable look of women who hadn’t slept well and wanted the fact known. Bridie said, “My, how refreshed you look!”

“You both look wonderful,” he said, tossing the ball back.

“All right, that’s the end of the sarcasm,” said Lady Westbrook. “Did anything happen up your end of the train during the night?”

“Nothing. I think our troubles may be over.”

“I think you are lying,” said Lady Westbrook.

He shrugged. “You’ll have to put up with that for a while yet, Viola. Perhaps I can give you a bit more of the truth after I’ve seen George Lathrop.”

She snorted. “George Lathrop has spent his life trying to hide the truth. You political agents are all the same. If ever I wanted Roger to tell me he loved me, I had to have him swear it on a bible.”

“In the meantime, will you both be my guests this evening? Unless the programme has been changed, my regiment is having a reception.”

Bridie looked at Lady Westbrook and the latter said, “I think we should accept, m’dear. You may
never
have another opportunity to see British peacocks on display. And the gossip will do my heart good.”

Farnol and Bridie smiled at each other, each listening to the gossip in their own hearts. Love was happening, if nothing else was.

Zoltan Monday came out into the corridor, stretched, saw Farnol and looked embarrassed.

“Ah, good morning, Major. Checking on your prisoner?”

“You’re now on parole, Mr. Monday, free to do whatever you wish. I’d just like you to report to me this evening at a reception my regiment is holding. Don’t bring your catalogues.”

Monday smiled. “You have an almost Hungarian sense of humour.”

“It must be a marvellous defence.”

“Oh, it is, Major, it is. That’s all that holds the Austro-Hungarian Empire together, though the Austrians would never admit it.”

“You sound very chipper this morning. Are you expecting to meet Mr. Brown in Delhi?”

Monday’s face clouded. “I am no longer interested in that business, Major, not even for half a million pounds. There are other clients.”

“I’m sure there are. But where?”

“My wife thinks she would like to see Singapore.”

Then a little later, before the Ranee, Magda and the Nawab’s wives emerged from their compartments, the train was pulling into Delhi.

George Lathrop was waiting for Farnol at the top end of the platform. “I got your telegraph message from Kalka, but I had the most awful bloody job finding out which station your train was arriving at. Then when I got that information nobody knew which platform. They’ve built Christ knows how many new stations around Delhi. Look at this one, Salimgarh. Ten platforms, every one of ‘em three hundred bloody yards long. This is where the King comes in tomorrow. Well, how are you, dear boy?”

George Lathrop was bluff and hearty, with prematurely white hair, a bristling white moustache and a monocle stuck in his right eye. He stopped just short of giving the impression of being a buffoon; only when he dropped the monocle from his eye did one see the penetrating shrewdness of his gaze. He had been in military and political intelligence for thirty years and he never scoffed at rumours of murder.

“I’m worried,” said Farnol.

“
I thought something must be on your mind, sending me that wire. Where’s Rupert Savanna?”

Farnol told him without elaboration. “I’ll fill you in later.”

“Jesus Christ!” Lathrop whacked his leg with his swagger stick. “Righto, keep it till we’re in a quiet place to talk. Whom did you come down with? That lot, eh? A nice bloody assortment. Well, come on. That’s all your kit? Good chap, you travel light.”

As they walked down the long platform Farnol looked at the bright new station festooned with banners and bunting. “I’ve never seen a station looking as clean and deserted as this.”

“Within three months it’ll look like all the rest. Coolies under your feet everywhere, dirt and shit all over the place—” Lathrop loved India and the Indians, but he could never be accused of being sentimental about either. “Hello, who’s this pretty gel?”

Bridie was coming towards them. She was tired and creased from the long journey; but her smile showed she was still a pretty gel. Farnol introduced her and Lathrop snapped his heels together and saluted her. He was happily married, but the story was that he wore his monocle only to hide his roving eye from his wife.

“I’m staying with Lady Westbrook,” Bridie told Farnol. “I don’t fancy being cooped up in the tents reserved for the Press.”

“Sensible gel,” said Lathrop. “Those newspaper chaps are cads and bounders, every one of ‘em. Old Viola will take good care of you.”

“Old Viola indeed! You make me sound like some musical antique.” Lady Westbrook had come down the platform behind a screen of bearers. “How is old George Lathrop?”

Lathrop shook hands with her and kissed her on the cheek. “You look bloody marvellous, old gel. Now we can start the Durbar.”

“Has Clive told you all the trouble we’ve had getting here? And don’t swear in front of Bridie—she has some illusions that all Englishmen are gentlemen.”

Lathrop apologized to Bridie. “Didn’t realize I was swearing, thought I was on my best behaviour.” He had the reputation of having the filthiest tongue in India; he could be obscene in four languages and seven dialects. The apology enabled him to ignore Lady Westbrook’s question, guessing it was going to lead to more questions: he had caught Farnol’s swift warning glance. “Well, must be off. Enjoy
yourselves,
ladies.”

He whisked Farnol away down the platform, leaving Lady Westbrook indignant and Bridie off-balance at Clive’s abrupt departure. Lady Westbrook said, “Blighter hasn’t changed. Everything takes second place to damned business! Well, where’s someone to take care of our luggage? Bearer!”

As they got into a military gharry outside the station Lathrop said, “Sorry I had to whisk you off like that, dear boy. Saw the princes and the Ranee coming down and didn’t want to be trapped by them before you’d talked to me. I once spent two nights with the Ranee. Dreadful bloody woman, didn’t know how to say no to her without getting my throat cut. Don’t mention it in front of the good wife, though.”

I was wrong, Farnol thought. George Lathrop
had
slept with Mala: she’s had her claws into all of us. He made no comment, instead looked out at the city of Delhi growing, actually growing while he watched, around him. He had not been in Delhi in five years and he was amazed at the transformation.

“All this, George, just for the Durbar? This used to be nothing but waste land—is that
grass
?”

“It ain’t green paint, dear boy. Yes, it’s grass. Parks, polo fields, cricket pitches. I came up here during the summer with His Excellency—this is all H.E’s baby, y’know. Over there—” he waved a hand—“there must have been a couple of thousand coolies, all squatting on their haunches in ranks. They were planting grass. Then the rain came and now—hundreds of acres of lawns!”

“What’s it all going to cost? A fortune for one week’s celebration? No wonder there—”

“Keep it to yourself, old chap.” Lathrop nodded warningly at the back of the gharry driver. “Just sit back and enjoy it all.”

“That’s not going to be easy.”

He looked out at the almost unrecognizable city. Delhi had known other glories than what would be enacted here in the coming week. It was not one city but a whole history of cities; but, as he had remembered it, it had been little more than dusty, overgrown ruins, overgrown with poverty-stricken coolies who had no memory of history. Anang Pal had been here, built the Red Fort nine hundred years ago; Kutb-ud-din had made it into a capital; Tamerlane had sacked it, as he had sacked so many other cities; Baber, the first Moghul emperor, had captured it. Shah Jehan had built it into the greatest city in India; inside his palace he had ordered the inscription, “If Paradise be on the face of the Earth, it is this—it is this, it is this.” But Paradise had proved less eternal than the Earth: in less than a century Nadir Shah had sacked the palace and
carried
off the Peacock Throne to Persia: the city began to crumble into the ruins on which it had been built. All that had remained, but for the Red Fort, some mosques and some tombs, had been the people, the most durable element in history.

Then the gharry was driving into the tented city that had mushroomed in the past week. Farnol had never seen such a vast encampment; the sun blazed on what might have been an arctic ice-field, the white tents throwing off a glare that seemed to dissipate the brown dust in the morning air. Flags flew everywhere from a forest of flagpoles, a silent battle of colourful challenges; regiments and clubs and institutions were proving their right to a place in the Durbar sun. Above it all the shite hawks hung in the sky, waiting patiently for the city to be demolished and the pickings, as always, left for them and the beggars from the crumbling Old City to the south.

“Forty-five square miles of it,” said Lathrop. “An extra quarter of a million people. All of it, as you say, for just one week. There were objections in Cabinet in London, I’m told, to the cost. Especially after the famine we had this year—” Then he nodded again at the driver’s back. “Tell you about it later.”

They turned off the main road, drove up a red dirt road on which the dust had been settled by a camel-drawn water-cart. They pulled up in front of a large tent flanked by four smaller tents; Farnol noticed that the pole outside the Political Service’s headquarters was bare of any flag; Lathrop believed that if one did not advertise, one might not be asked questions. As they got out of the gharry Lathrop pointed up the road.

“That’s the King’s camp. Jolly nice, too. I went through it yesterday with the Security chaps. Rather exotic. Don’t know how the King will take to it. He’s not much for silks and satins, I gather.”

Lathrop led the way into the big tent, casually returning the salute of the Ghurka on guard at the entrance. He and Farnol passed through an outer office where four NCOs sat at desks, and into the rear of the tent. The office staff greeted Farnol with nods, but they knew the real greetings had to wait while the O.C. got his report from this man who had the reputation of being the best field man in the Service.

Lathrop waved Farnol to a chair and took his place behind a desk. Coloured photos of the King and Queen hung on one wall of the tent; on the opposite wall hung a photo of the real Raj of India, His Excellency the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge of Penshurt. Farnol had a sudden moment of doubt and wondered if he was mistaken about the intended victim of the assassination plot.

“
Start right in, dear boy. It’s a little early, but I think a whisky wouldn’t do you any harm.”

A bearer brought in a tray, retired at once as Lathrop waved him away and poured the drink himself. Farnol sipped the whisky, let himself relax; or forced himself to. If Lathrop believed his suspicions, his responsibility was over. And, the most comforting thought of all, Sankar might no longer consider him a worthwhile target. Not with the real target so close now . . . He found he was not relaxing at all and he put down his drink and sat forward.

“George, I believe there’s a plot to assassinate the King—”

Lathrop listened without interrupting. He took his monocle out and polished it with a silk handkerchief, but didn’t put it back in his eye; instead, he rolled it through his fingers as he might have a coin, smudging it and cleaning it again and yet again. It was the only sign that he was troubled by what Farnol was telling him.

“Well, that’s it, George. I hope you believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t I, dear boy? Just because we haven’t lost a monarch from assassination in five hundred years doesn’t mean it hasn’t been tried. There were five or six attempts to kill Queen Victoria. There’s enough bloody sedition going on in this country right now . . . H.E. knows about it, but I don’t think he’d dare mention it to the King. His Majesty has some pretty firm ideas of his own about how India should be run. He doesn’t think much of the ICS—I gather he doesn’t think much of civil servants anywhere. He’s all for strengthening the powers of the princes and the hereditary rulers.”