The Serpent's Shadow (18 page)

He looked around the empty shop then, and realized how very long it was going to be until eight o‘clock that evening.

Maya alighted from the cab with more than her usual energy at this time of night. She hadn't bothered with the veil coming back; as poorly lit as the streets here were, why trouble herself? Besides, she was in the cab most of the time anyway.

“Thank you, Tom,” she said with gratitude. She'd forgotten this was a Saturday, and the resultant number of drunks hanging about the Fleet was double the usual. She'd been glad to get past them and into the waiting cab.

“Moi pleasure, ma‘am,” Tom replied, with a grin. “The timin' is pretty good anyways, come Satterdays. I usually gets a fella t' take down nears t' the Fleet, an' by th' time I brings ye back here, it's about time fer th' theater crowd, an' you're handy t' that.”

“Fair enough—and good luck to you for the rest of the night!” she called after him as he pulled away. She was about to enter the door of her surgery, when the unusual sound of
another
cab coming along arrested her before she could set her hand to the latch.

She wondered for a moment if it wasn't sheer coincidence—but then the cab stopped right at her door, and Peter Scott alighted, paid the driver and exchanged a few words with him, then turned toward her as the second cab moved off.

She smiled; she couldn't help herself. “Very punctual, Mister Scott,” she said approvingly.

He touched his hat to her. “I try to be, Doctor Witherspoon.”

Good. No “Miss Witherspoon,” no “ma‘am,” and certainly no “Maya” or “Miss Maya.” He's not presuming anything, except that I agree with his judgment and accept his offer of teaching.
That pleased her; she'd had her fill and more of men who “presumed” far too much, given her mixed heritage. She unlocked the door. He opened it for her, a gentlemanly action, especially given that she was already burdened with her bag and umbrella.

Gupta, on hearing the cab and her key in the lock, materialized in the hallway, and looked surprised, even shocked, to see that she wasn't alone. “Mem sahib—” he began, and then stopped, for once caught without words.

“You remember Captain Scott from yesterday,” she prompted. Gupta nodded, cautiously. “Captain Scott was
not
here for a knee ailment, as I'm sure you guessed. He is a man of magic; he came to see what was causing a—”

“—disturbance,” Peter Scott supplied, when she groped for words; he did not seem at all surprised that she revealed her secret and his—if it even was one to those in her household—to her servant. “Doctor Witherspoon and I recognized each other for what we are. I am here to—” A slight hesitation, then thaf charming, faint smile crinkled the corners of his eyes “—to trade my lore for hers, seeing as we come from opposite sides of the world.”

Gupta's face suddenly lit up, as if Peter Scott had given him his heart's desire. The transformation from suspicious old warrior and wary guardian to this was nothing short of startling. “You are to teach her! Blessed be Lord Ganesh, who has answered my prayers! Oh, mem sahib, this is good, this is very good!”

Peter Scott looked thunderstruck; Maya almost laughed at the comical expression on his face. She wasn't in the least surprised by Gupta's lightning conclusion, given the revelations she'd had from him last night and his quick mind. He'd known from the moment that Peter Scott entered the door that the knee was pretense; he'd also known that whatever reason there had been for the deception, Maya had penetrated it and dismissed it, because she had invited him into the garden. And the animals clearly approved of him—if Gupta didn't know
exactly
what they were (and she wouldn't necessarily wager that he didn't) he at least knew that they were something special, for they had been her mother's companions once her twin sister deserted her. Anyone
they
approved of could not be bad.

Thus—his quick appreciation of the reason for Captain Scott's appearance at this hour.

“Will you go to the garden? Or to—the other room?” he asked, as Peter Scott struggled to regain his composure.

“The garden for now, I think, Gupta. Please see that we are left alone,” she replied, knowing that Gupta would carry out her wishes to the letter. After all, she didn't
need
his physical protection in the garden.
Nisha
was in the garden, and it was well after dark. She would be awake and watching, and eagle-owls had been known to kill (if not carry off) newborn kids and fawns. If Peter Scott dared to lay so much as an unwanted finger on her, he would shortly be displaying a bloody, furrowed scalp.

Gupta simply bowed and vanished. Maya herself led her guest back through the house into the conservatory. Once there, she delayed the moment of truth for a little by lighting several more candle-lanterns, while Scott settled himself into the same chair he had taken yesterday morning. She glanced up, and caught sight of Nisha's eyes gleaming down at her from the shadows above.

A moment more, however, and a swirl of mongooses enveloped Peter Scott's ankles, while Charan took imperious possession of his lap. A laugh escaped him, and he looked surprised that it had.

I don't think he laughs very much,
she thought, as she took advantage of her little friends' purposeful confusion to take possession of her chair.
And I think that's a great pity.

Only when she was seated did they grant him relief from their deliberately exuberant greetings. They both looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Maya decided to be the one to break the silence.

“I am glad that you wrote to me,” she said, simply.

“I'm glad that you replied,” he countered. “Very. Would it be too much to ask how it is that you—came to be what you are?”

“Not even half trained, you mean?” she responded ruefully. “What magic I learned, I learned on my own, from street magicians and fakirs. My mother could not teach me—oh, she had magic enough, more than enough, but she said that
my
magic was not the magic of
her
land, that it came to me through my father, and it was from my father's people that I must learn it.”

“Ah.” She watched the shadows of his thoughts flitting across his face. “Well, then,” he finally said, with a certain cheer. “There won't be anything for you to unlearn.”

She had to laugh at that. “One small blessing, and I suppose I must be grateful for every blessing in this sorry situation. So; please, start from the beginning. Explain to me; tell me about—” she thought quickly back to his letter “—explain to me about Elementals, and Masters, and all the rest.”

“What, am I to be your storyteller now?” he asked, in what was clearly mock indignation, much to her delight. “Well, then, on your own head be it if you are bored—because I am very
bad
at telling stories!”

Actually, she thought, as she listened attentively to his explanations, he was a very good storyteller. Or to put it more truly, he was very good at making clear explanations of things she had felt, but could not articulate. She settled in to absorb all that she could, with all the intensity she had ever put into learning medicine.

There were no illusions about what she was about to learn, no matter how Peter Scott diverted her. This was more important than anything she had ever put her mind to, for if she did not master what she needed to know, and quickly ...

... then she might never have the chance to learn anything ever again—other than the answer to the question of whether it was Christian Heaven, Hindu Wheel, or something else entirely that awaited after death.

8

S
HADOWS moved in the corners of the room, but Kali Durga's priestess knew that there could be no one present here but herself. Her servants were afraid to come into the temple when the priestess was present, fearing, no doubt, that if a sacrifice was required and nothing appropriate was at hand, one of them would be taken. Silly creatures; Shivani would never sacrifice a servant, not unless the servant became intractable and disobedient, for where would she get a trained replacement? And no servant of Shivani's ever became disobedient. She never gave them the reason or the freedom to disobey. She never terrified them enough so that they felt pushed into an inescapable corner by their fears, and she never gave them enough leisure to contemplate any other life but this.

As for her followers, the thugees and the dacoits, they worshiped Shivani with a fervor second only to that which they very properly accorded the Goddess. She had told them never to enter while she was in meditation. Therefore, unless the temple was burning down around her ears, or the wretched English invaded it, they never would. It was quite that simple.

Incense smoke, heavy and sweet, with a faint hint in its odor that called up a memory of spilled blood, hung in uneven striations across the length of the room. The smoke diffused and dimmed the uncertain light of many candles ranged in pottery lanterns made to resemble carved stone. It overpowered the stink of boiled cabbage and sausages (a hideous, ancient smell of poverty and despair that permeated the entire building) and managed at last to sweep it away.

Shivani hated that smell. She hated everything about the English, it was true, but that
smell
—it was impossible to escape, a constant reminder of where she was. But she needed a place large enough to contain her, the temple, and her followers and servants, yet a place where she and hers would not attract undue attention. There
was
no Indian quarter; the immigrants from home here in London were either servants and had their own places in an English master's house, or the wealthy offspring of the Brahmin caste and were invariably male and attending Cambridge or Oxford. Although price had not played a factor in where Shivani settled her flock, the requirement for invisibility had. That meant there was only one place where she and Kali Durga's people could go; the East End, where immigrants of darker complexions than her, stranger languages than Urdu, and religions equally as alien to the English swarmed in their thousands. Shivani had commandeered a kind of warehouse with apartments attached, paying the asked-for price without bargaining, and the former owner had not asked questions. He had simply thrown out the current tenants at her request, clearing the way for her people.

But the stink of them remained, and the same smells penetrated the cleansed building at every meal.

At least the incense was able to chase it out of the temple. Blue wisps of the heavy smoke curled around the altar at the northern end of the room, garlanding the painted statue of Kali Durga, with Her blue tongue protruding, Her heavy, round breasts obscured by Her necklace and Her garlands, Her hands red, and not with henna or paint. The source of the smoke, charcoal braziers in each corner, kept the room at a properly elevated temperature, so that here in Her place, Shivani was warm enough without resorting to piles of wrappings.

Garlands of marigolds bedecked the statue, partly concealing the necklaces of skulls that were Kali Durga's only clothing above the waist. More of them draped over Her several arms, Her hands holding severed heads, daggers, or making sacred gestures. Kali Durga's altar, gilded and most gloriously carved, with demons of every description writhing about the skulls at each corner, was as magnificent as her statue, and just as newly created. Both, in fact, had been made in this very room, once the room had been cleansed and consecrated. Shivani knew that the wretched British sahibs, warned about the cult of thugee, were apt to poke their inquisitive noses into cargoes sent out of the country by natives rather than the trading companies of other sahibs. Unfortunately, the Colonial Police were perfectly capable of recognizing a statue of the Goddess of the cult when they saw it. So Shivani had emigrated with no statues, no altars, nothing to furnish a temple. She brought instead a skilled and devout woodcarver, an artist of the first rank, a maker of holy images with more talent in his littlest finger than most men could ever dream of commanding. Shivani truly believed that had his hands been amputated he could carve with his feet. Take them, and he would carve with a knife held in his teeth.

Only the altar and the statue needed to be made on the spot, for all the rest of the furnishings of a temple were to be had in the marketplaces of London. From the braziers to the incense burners, from the carved screens adorning the walls to the offering bowl at Kali's feet, everything in this room had been bought openly of dealers in exotic goods or in the myriad street markets. Often enough, Shivani's minions had purchased articles stolen from
other
temples to furnish Kali's place of worship. It gave her an ironic sense of satisfaction to beautify the temple of Kali Durga with holy things recleansed and redeemed from those who valued them not—except as trophies they did not understand.