‘As they were in the days before the massacre of Vellore,’ interjected Niaz scornfully.
‘Yes. As in the days before Vellore. There is a saying among our people that those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.’
‘A true saying indeed,’ said Niaz. ‘But thou shalt have thy proof, though small good will it give thee.’
‘Ah!’ said Alex, his eyes suddenly bright. ‘I thought that there was something more. Tell me swiftly and let us have no more of this talk that runs in circles.’
Niaz laughed. “‘We are as God made us,”’ he quoted. “‘The mould is set.” It is only the English who rush straight upon the heart of the matter, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Yes, there is indeed something more. I would not have troubled thee on account of bazaar rumours.’
He glanced uneasily over his shoulder as though to make sure that there could be no third person near by, and despite the fact that nothing larger than a jackal could possibly have approached within fifty yards of them without being seen, he lowered his voice until it was barely audible: ‘I have learned,’ whispered Niaz, ‘that there is to be a meeting of certain men in a place near Khanwai that lies to the north of Bithaur within the borders of Oudh. It is dangerous knowledge and known only to a few. Perhaps a hundred in all Hind: no more.’
‘And how didst thou come by it?’ inquired Alex softly.
Niaz threw his hands out palm upwards in a brief, indescribable gesture. ‘A woman. How else? Her husband is old and moreover he drinks wine. The Prophet forbade the drinking of wine, and rightly, for by indulgence in this are tongues loosened and many plans brought to ruin. When a woman has discovered a matter that should be hid she will tell it for idleness or mischief or’ - Niaz grinned - ‘for love’s sake.’
‘But is it true talk that she has told thee?’
‘It is true. That I would swear on my life. I do not know what it is that they who meet will speak of or do, but this I know - that it bodes no good. So I have had the thought that it would be well if we two learned what is afoot. It is set for a night but twelve days hence, when there is a fair at Khanwai. I have been to spy out the land. The place of their meeting is a ruin; no more than a handful of stones and a broken wall which the jungle has swallowed. A foolish spot for such talk, but these men are assuredly bitten with madness. There is but one path to it, for the jungle grows thick behind it, and that path leads through a deep nullah where was once a gateway that has fallen. Only one man at a time can pass through, and each as they pass must say a word. That word I have.’
Once again Niaz paused to peer into the gathering dusk, and in the silence they heard from somewhere far out across the darkening plains a jackal howling at the evening star. Niaz’s gaze returned to Alex and even the green dusk could not disguise the glitter of his eyes and the flash of his teeth.
‘You old devil!’ said Alex in English - the same glitter in his own eyes. ‘Niaz, thou wilt surely end thy days in a hangman’s noose! Was the overturning of that dâk-ghari thy work?’
Niaz waved a deprecatory hand. ‘I judged it to be necessary,’ he said airily. ‘Also the driver was an un-friend of mine. I owed him somewhat in the matter of repayment for certain insolence that he had spoken. He was an eater of opium and he dozed upon the box. A twitch of the reins, and the thing was done.’
‘And if my neck had been broken, O son of Eblis?’
‘There was no fear of that. A few scratches and a bruise or two at most. No more. It was necessary that we should separate ourselves from those others who travelled by the road. Do we go to Khanwai?’
‘Assuredly,’ said Alex, and laughed. It was a laugh that men hear sometimes in the heat of battle or as the order is given for a cavalry charge, and that no woman would recognize. Niaz recognized it and his own laugh answered and echoed it.
A rush of wings swept the darkening sky above them and Alex snatched up his gun and fired. There were two splashes within a yard of each other, some twenty feet away, and the placid surface of the jheel broke into ripples that spread out across the water in ever-widening circles to slap against the rushes. Niaz came to his feet in one lithe movement and waded out to retrieve the fallen birds as Alex snapped open the smoking breech and ejected the spent cartridges.
‘That is a new toy,’ said Niaz returning. ‘I have not seen one that is loaded thus before.’
He examined the mechanism of the pin-fire breech-loading gun with interest, peering at it in the dim light, and then snapping it shut he shouldered it and picked up the dead birds. ‘Come, it is time we returned.’
They left the jheel and walked companionably back across the darkened plain towards the twinkling lights of the dâk-bungalow while the sky above them blossomed with stars and a jackal-pack howled from beyond the grazing grounds. But as they neared the dense shadows of the mango-tope Niaz fell back, so that they returned to the bungalow with the British officer walking ahead and his silent orderly six paces behind him; to all appearances poles apart.
Alex retired to his bed early that night, but Niaz had work to do. That he did it well was proved by his appearance before the verandah at daybreak accompanied by the headman of the village, several curious onlookers and three horses. These miserable offspring of unmentionable sires and unspeakable dams were, explained Niaz cheerfully, the property of the headman who had agreed to sell them for the exorbitant sum of one hundred and fifty rupees for the three. Here the headman broke into voluble protests, alleging that on the contrary the price was so low that the horses were little less than a gift.
‘Send him away before his bellowings deafen me,’ said Alex. ‘I suppose we can mount these starvelings without them falling dead, but I doubt it.’
‘It is better than being slain by the futility of these ghari drivers,’ said Niaz, paying over the money in silver coin. ‘Heaven forfend that any of our own rissala see us thus mounted! That third animal is but a pack-pony for the transporting of gear.’
They rode away in the cool of the morning and were swallowed up by the vast, secretive land and the shifting polyglot millions of India as though they had been no more than two grains of dust on the endless plains.
* Nee-ahz.
* A koss = 2 miles.
16
Ten days later an itinerant toy-seller, his pack laden with crudely painted plaster trifles, trudged down the dusty road that led from Cawnpore into Oudh. He had no assistant, but he was of a cheerful and gregarious disposition and always ready to enter into conversation with fellow-travellers upon the road and at the wayside halts. At one of these he had attached himself to a party of jugglers who were proceeding to the fair at Khanwai, a small village on the borders of Oudh not far from Bithaur.
His ready wit and the quick-fire patter with which he accompanied the sale of his gimcrack toys appealed to the leader of the troupe, and after some haggling it was agreed that the man, Jatu by name, should act as barker to the jugglers in the intervals of pursuing his own trade. In return for which the troupe would provide him with food and, if profits allowed, a small percentage of the takings; an arrangement that appeared highly satisfactory to all.
From the opposite direction, that of Fathigarh, a slim, wiry Pathan, sitting astride a bony and bad-tempered down-country mare and trailed by two sorry-looking hacks on a lead rein, was also riding towards the fair at Khanwai. His dress and speech, and the hard, light-coloured eyes in the brown face, proclaimed him as a son of the border tribe of the Usafzai, and he too was of a cheerful disposition, for he sang the songs of the Border - the more questionable ones - as he rode, and was always ready to fall into talk with any he met upon the road.
His cousin Assad Ali, he explained to any who were interested, had brought a string of horses down from the north hoping to sell them for greater profit in the Punjab and Rohilkhand. He had done well with his string, but he had died of the cholera at a village on the outskirts of Delhi, and his horseboys, fearing the disease, had run away taking with them the greater
part of the profits, so that now he, Sheredil, with only three unsaleable hacks picked up at Karnal, had taken the road alone, hoping to dispose of them further south. He had heard talk of a fair at Khanwai and intended to try his luck there. He carried a long Pathan knife in his broad waist-belt, and an antiquated but serviceable jezail slung over his shoulder, together with a well-stocked cartridge-belt; and he took for preference the centre of the road. Alex had always been a believer in the old saying that it is darkest under the lamp.
The town of Khanwai was little more than a village, and distinguished only by an annual fair which was held in honour of a treaty between two warring clans who centuries ago had endeavoured to exterminate each other for reasons long lost sight of in the mists of time. The fairground was surrounded by the booths of sweetmeat-sellers, toy-makers and hucksters, and there was plenty to entertain the idle: jugglers, acrobats, fire-eaters, a sad and ragged performing bear, snake-charmers and fortune-tellers. And as night fell a troupe of firework-makers brightened the sky with a display of their wares and frightened the timorous with the crash of exploding rockets. But as the fireworks flared, dyeing the awed faces of the spectators red, green and amber by turns, it might have been noted, had any been interested in such a thing, that sundry men were drifting away from the fairground by ones and twos and making their way through the fields beyond the village to the uncultivated land and the dark barrier of the jungle that backed on the grazing grounds.
Sheredil of the Usafzai, following the same path, caught his garments on an unseen branch of a thorn tree and swore softly and fluently in Pushtu as he freed himself, and a shadow that followed noiselessly on his heels lengthened its stride and spoke in a whisper: ‘Hai! thou from the north’ - Alex checked and his hand went to the knife in his belt - ‘what dost thou here? Thou art a Pathan and no man of Hind.’
‘I come that I may carry the word to those who wait beyond the Border,’ replied Alex in whispered Hindustani: ‘And thou?’
‘I likewise; but to Bengal go I: to Berhampore by Murshidabad. Of what pulton art thou?’
‘Of none. But my cousin’s brother-in-law is a daffadar in the Guides,’ said Alex mendaciously. ‘He too is like-minded with us. And thy Regiment?’
‘The 19th Bengal Infantry’ - he was a pūrbeah sepoy on leave, a lance naik and a man of some influence in his Regiment. He hurried on ahead and was lost in the shadows.
The flare of the fireworks from the fairground lit the path with intermittent flashes of light, and in these brief glimpses Alex could see that there were men ahead and behind him, hastening forward down the narrow track that wound between thickets of thorn, bamboos, dhâk trees and elephant grass, but keeping a safe distance from each other. Niaz had studied the ground with the eye of a general, and a map that he had drawn in the dust of the roadside, though crude, had been remarkably accurate, so that even by night and on strange ground Alex could guess the lie of the land and knew what to expect.
The path - it was little more than a goat-track - wandered with apparent aimlessness between tall clumps of grass and finally descended a sandy slope into a dry nullah. To the right the nullah ran straight on into the darkness, but to the left it narrowed and appeared to be blocked by a fall of rock. The sepoy could not have been half a dozen yards ahead, but he had vanished, and Alex, turning unhesitatingly to the left, was once again grateful for the care with which Niaz had reconnoitred the ground. There was a space between two huge slabs of fallen rock that would have been invisible to one who was not aware of it, for the rocks overlapped each other and were overgrown with creepers and the roots of a tree, and only a close inspection by full daylight would have discovered the gap.
It reminded Alex unpleasantly of another nullah more than a hundred miles to the north-west of Oudh, down which he had walked one hot and sunny morning almost seven years ago. That nullah too had apparently ended in a fall of rock, and Alex, idly investigating, had found his way through a narrow gap and come face to face with a full-grown tiger who had been approaching it from the opposite side. He could still remember the stare of the savage yellow eyes in that huge black-barred head … the way in which the whiskers had lifted as the lips curled back in a slow soundless snarl and the sight of the muscles under the wonderful painted hide bunching for the spring. There had been no room for either of them to turn, and Alex, who had been out after partridge, carried only a shotgun. He had fired both barrels at point-blank range and the great taloned paw had struck him as the creature died. He carried the mark still, and would always carry it; and now he felt the scar burn as though it were new in his flesh. There would be no jungle beast on the far side of this hidden gap in the rock tonight, but something infinitely more dangerous: man.
The gap was only wide enough to allow one at a time to enter it, and behind it, so Niaz had told him, lay a narrow walled tunnel; for this had once been the outer gateway of a fortress whose walls ran back to left and right, hidden and overgrown by the trees and creeper of the jungle. Alex heard feet slither on the path behind him as another conspirator entered the nullah, and he set his teeth and walked on between the rocks.
He had taken no more than four steps in the blackness when his outstretched hands touched the shaft of a spear that barred his way. It dropped instantly and after a moment’s pause he moved forward again and heard it lift once more behind him and heard, too, a man’s quick breathing. ‘Making sure we go through one at a time,’ thought Alex grimly. He could see no glimmer of light and his hands brushed against rough stonework. Niaz had said that the tunnel of the ruined gateway was no more than eight fair paces in length; which meant that there was something or someone blocking the far end of it … Then he saw a glimpse of greyness and something touched his chest - an iron-bound lathi such as night-watchmen carry - and a voice almost in his ear whispered: ‘Give the word.’
‘A white goat for Kali.’
‘Pass, brother.’ The lathi dropped and Alex moved on into the open air.
The sides of the nullah were steeper and narrower here than on the far side of the concealed entrance, and the jungle arched above it and excluded the moonlight so that the place was almost as dark as the tunnel behind it. Then the darkness thinned and torchlight glowed through the undergrowth ahead, and presently the track ran out into a clearing before the ruins of a long-forgotten fort or palace.
The starlight and a half-moon, the flaming torches and the occasional flare of a rocket illuminated roofless walls and fallen pillars half hidden by weeds and creepers. A giant peepul tree split the stones of what might once have been a hall of audience, and in the uncertain light it was difficult to tell which were fallen pillars and which the roots of the great tree. India is full of such ruins; relics of cities and dynasties that have passed away and been forgotten; the haunt of snakes, foxes and monkeys and the lair of the wild boar.
It seemed to Alex an odd spot to choose for a meeting of malcontents, except that there was little doubt that the place had a certain eerie atmosphere about it, and though it lay less than half a mile from Khanwai and the beaten track, its presence would never have been suspected by the casual passer-by. He could see now that the clearing was not a natural one, but the remains of what had once been a large stone-paved courtyard, open to the sky. Thorn bushes and the tough jungle grass had thrust their way between the sandstone blocks, but the jungle had been unable to obliterate them and stood back from it, walling it about with impenetrable vegetation.
The open space was crowded with shadowy figures and sibilant with whispering voices, and Alex stood still, the lance naik of the 19th Bengal Infantry breathing heavily beside him. At the far side of the square, where a broken flight of steps led up to the ruined entrance to a roofless hall, stood two men holding torches - flaring country-made things of dried grass, branches and pitch. They stood as though waiting, and the orange light flickered weirdly on the rolling eyeballs of the shifting, whispering crowd and threw grotesque shadows on the wall of the watching jungle.
Pres
ently there was a stir among the men at Alex’s back and the crowd drew aside, Alex with them, as half a dozen men muffled in dark cloaks entered the clearing by way of the nullah. It seemed that they had been expected, for the crowd made a lane for them, parting to left and right, and they passed quickly through and came to a stop before the torch-bearers. They stood for a few moments talking in undertones with a small group of men who had apparently been waiting for them, while the crowd ceased its whispering to listen. But Alex was too far away to hear what was said, and it is doubtful if any but a handful heard, since at that point the fireworks on the distant fairground let off a very fusillade of rockets.
‘This is too easy,’ thought Alex, waiting for the new arrivals to mount the ruined steps behind them from where he imagined that they would harangue the crowd. ‘There must be a catch in it somewhere.’ A line from a nursery rhyme jigged through his brain: ‘“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.’ It had been easy enough to walk in, but would it be as easy to walk out again?
The group of men by the torch-bearers turned, but they did not mount the steps behind them as Alex had half-expected. They walked between the torches and simply disappeared as though the ground had opened and swallowed them up.
From where Alex stood the illusion was so complete that he heard the men about him gasp and shrink back, and saw the sepoy put up a hand to clutch at some hidden amulet he wore concealed under his shirt. Then the crowd began to move forward slowly and he realized that the torch-bearers stood either side of a shaft that descended into the ground, and as he drew nearer he saw that the two men with the torches scrutinized the faces of all who went past them. A hand touched him in the press and he turned to see Jatu, the seller of toys.
‘They will never let me pass. Try the ring!’ The words were barely a breath against his ear and then the man had melted into the darkness and was gone.