‘Who better?’ said the old man. ‘Yea, yea, I know the house and I have heard the tale. But this is a sad time for home-going, my daughter. In Lucknow the courtyards are empty and the kutcharis (law courts) are full, and many who were pensioners of the King starve while the new Government decide what is to be paid to them, and by whom. When one is old and has lived by means of such a grant from the King - a few rupees only each month - and the grant ceases while the new Government talk of whether it is fit that it be paid, then there is nothing left but to die … if the talk lasts longer than an old man and an ageing woman can live without bread.’
His voice was devoid of either animosity or bitterness. He was simply stating a fact, dispassionately and without heat. It had been promised that pensions, wherever possible, would still be paid. But claims to pensions had to be proved, and the wheels ground slowly, for in the turmoil and disorganization caused by the change of Governments, the processes of justice were necessarily slow.
Ameera and Alex and many of Winter’s friends and acquaintances in Lunjore city had spoken of Lucknow and the troublous times that had befallen it, and Winter had listened because it was of her own secret city that they spoke. But it was not until now, when an old man who waited patiently beside her to cross the bridge spoke of those troubles without heat or indignation, that a sudden fear came upon her.
Ameera’s husband had also lost employment and livelihood through the annexation of Oudh. Were they, too, in want? Winter thought again, and uneasily, of Ameera’s letter …
She had written to Ameera, telling her of the proposed visit to Lucknow, and Ameera had replied with expressions of delight and had promised to call upon her at the earliest possible moment. But she had suggested - it had been barely more than a hint - that she still could not ask her to the Gulab Mahal. They would be able, she wrote, to talk over such matters when they met. The letter had ended with the bald information that her brother, the young Khalig Dad, was dead.
Winter had sent condolences, and had not given over-much thought to the hint that she might still not be welcome at the Gulab Mahal. But she remembered it now. It could not be true that Ameera did not want her at the Gulab Mahal! … or was it the wife of a British official who was unwelcome?
There was nothing in Winter’s first sight of the beautiful, barbaric city of Lucknow that awoke even an echo of memory.
They had reached it on the evening of the following day, when the wide sweep of the river, the massed, scented greenery of the gardens, the fantastic silhouettes of golden-domed palaces and soaring minarets, fretted balconies and pointed temple-tops, were bathed in the full glow of the sunset.
There were many British on the wide, shady roads enjoying the evening air: officers and civilians on horseback, ladies in light-coloured dresses driving out in buggies, victorias and high dog-carts, and children bowling hoops under the indulgent and watchful eyes of ayahs or orderlies. Many of them had turned their heads to watch the girl in the grey habit ride past, their attention caught by the bright look of eager expectancy on the young face under the ugly, wide-brimmed pith hat.
Alex would have recognized that expression. But even he had not seen it for many months, and no one else in Lunjore had ever seen it at all.
A long high wall enclosed the grounds of the Casa de Ballesteros, and the gateway of Moorish design was splashed over by the vivid brilliance of bougainvillea. The gateman salaamed low as Winter rode in under the arch, and his bright old eyes followed her approvingly. ‘That is indeed Marcos Sahib’s daughter,’ he said, addressing a peering group who had gathered by the gate. ‘I who have been many years in the service of the house, remember. The very look of her father! What a pity she were not a son. It is many years since my young Sahib, his wife being dead of the birth of this daughter, rode away to fight for the Sikar (Government) in Afghanistan, and would not take me with him because I lay sick of a fever. Hai mai! The house has been empty overlong. It is not good for a house to lie empty … or a heart.’
Her father’s house was as unfamiliar to Winter as the city had been. But the golden ghost of Sabrina would have found little changed, for the years had been kind to the House of the Peacocks, and it seemed that here time had stood still. The groves of lemon trees and pomegranates still scented the twilight, roses and jasmine and climbing begonia still filled the great stone jars along the river terrace with cascades of colour, and the fountains still made a splashing, tinkling music in the patios.
Mr Saumarez and his wife, the caretakers whom Marcos had installed so many years ago, had done their work well, and an army of servants, many of whom had served Winter’s grandparents, had stayed on under the terms of the young Conde’s will and had faithfully swept and polished and dusted the huge empty rooms, taking care always to replace everything in the exact position in which it had been found.
The raging heat and the drenching rains, the dust-storms and the brief cold weathers of close on eighteen years, had taken toll of the house; but on that first evening it was difficult to see to what extent they had done so, for the kindly light of candles hid many blemishes. It was only in the full daylight that the ravages of the years became apparent, and Winter could see where the brocades had faded and frayed until a touch would tear them, where the woodwork had warped and cracked, and the dark, beautiful Spanish portraits on the walls had become stained and blotched with damp.
The servants who remembered her parents had pressed about her with smiles and tears and garlands, and she had been touched; though a little saddened because she could not remember even one face among all those faces. But it had been pleasant to talk to people who had known her parents and spoke of them as though they had only lately lived in that house. People who could remember her mother’s wedding-day, and how a dress for the bridal had been found among her grandmother’s boxes because the bride had only a riding-habit and had brought nothing with her.
It had been a white dress, they told her, and that had been a bad omen, since white, as all knew, was for widows and for the dead. Red was for bridals! - red and gold, the colours of rejoicing. Though it might be that she had worn white in mourning for the father and mother of her husband, who had died but a short while before … And Winter heard again, from the lips of the old night-watchman who had helped open the heavy door of the tomb, how her grandfather, Don Ramon, had kept vigil by his wife’s coffin and had died of it. The stories that Zobeida had told her, told again and in the house that had seen them happen - the great Spanish Casa that Don Ramon had built in his romantic youth on the banks of the Goomti, and named the ‘House of the Peacocks’.
The peacocks still cried in the dusk and at dawn, and sometimes Winter would find a glittering, gold-powdered tail-feather lying on the grass or on the stone flags of the river terrace. The servants would collect them, tying them together and using the gorgeous things as feather dusters to brush the pictures and portraits that Don Ramon had brought from Spain.
Conway strongly disapproved of what he termed her habit of ‘gossiping with the nauker-log’. It was, he said, undignified and ridiculous and merely tended to encourage familiarity, insolence and idleness. There was also, in his opinion, something definitely objectionable about her proficiency in their language. Dammit, what with her black hair and those eyes, not to mention her yellow skin (all this goin’ out riding was making her devilish sunburnt) people might even get the idea that he had married a half-caste! To possess a smattering of Hindustani was useful - but to talk it like a native was not at all the thing, and he trusted that she would not display that talent in Luck-now society.
They had not been left long alone, for the news that the Commissioner of Lunjore and his Anglo-Spanish bride were in residence at the Casa de Ballesteros had brought a host of callers to the house, and Conway accepted and issued numerous invitations. This was not what Winter had wished to come to Lucknow for. This was Lunjore again - the endless luncheons, dinners, assemblies, card-parties and races. But she did not know how they could be avoi
ded except on a plea of ill-health, and she could not plead ill-health and then ride in the park and about the city, and she would not hide indoors. There was only one person she had wanted to see in Lucknow, and that was Ameera. And only one place - the Gulab Mahal.
Hamida had brought a message and a gift of flowers and fruit from Ameera on that first evening, but the message had only been to say that Ameera would come and see her as soon as it could be arranged.
‘Then am I not to go to the Gulab Mahal?’ asked Winter bluntly of Hamida.
‘Presently, my bird, presently,’ said Hamida. ‘But wait until thou hast first seen the Begum Sahiba. She will come soon.’
Ameera had arrived at dusk one evening in a palanquin with tinselled curtains borne by bearers in shabby finery; and by good fortune Conway had been out. She had embraced Winter with tears in her eyes, and they had walked together on the river terrace in the cool twilight while Hamida and two of the grizzled retainers from the Gulab Mahal kept watch to warn away any intrusive males.
They had talked of many things, but the news that Ameera brought had been a bitter blow, for it meant no more than this - Winter must not come to the Rose Palace. Not now. Not yet. Some day, promised Ameera, but not at this time.
Khalig Dad, son of Wali Dad and Juanita, who had been born less than three months before Winter - Khalig Dad who was to have been ‘a great king and have seven sons’ - had been killed in a street brawl. He had died from a blow on the head received when a drunken and truculent crowd of young dandies, of whom he had been the ringleader, had been mistaken for rioters by some fuddled British officers who were returning late at night from a party in one of the recently commandeered palaces. The true story had never come out and no action had been taken by the authorities, for there had been many unpleasant incidents in Lucknow since the annexation of Oudh, and one more was only one among many. But the incident had been exaggerated to stir up trouble and ill-feeling, and the body of Juanita’s son had been paraded through the streets by a howling mob who had had to be dispersed by force.
‘He was my brother,’ said Ameera, ‘and I should not speak against him, for he was only a youth, and foolish, and might have grown out of his wild ways. But I have heard from one who was there that he had drunk overmuch wine, and that seeing the Angrezi officers he thought to make sport of them, and he and those who were with him threw firecrackers beneath the feet of their horses and danced about them, shouting. I have heard also that though the sahibs became hot and angry and laid about them with their riding-crops, there were no shots fired. Only the partarkars (crackers). But Dasim’s wife, Mumtaz, will not have it. She is like my husband and hates all foreigners.’
Ameera sighed, thinking of her husband Walayat Shah, and the hatred that had soured him since the Company’s Government had deposed the King of Oudh. She had attempted to explain something of his attitude to Winter, though it had been difficult, since he no longer spoke his mind to his wife …
Walayat Shah had at no time felt any friendship towards the British, but he had admired force - when it was successful - and as long as the British won battles and crowned their mercenary armies with glory, he had been prepared to view them with toleration and a certain degree of respect. Now, however, they had deprived him at one stroke of all rights and privileges and put an end to his means of livelihood, so that almost overnight, from holding a position of some power and authority, he had become little more than a pauper; forced even to prove his claim before a British official to land that his family had held for generations, and which was now his only source of income. And the proving of such claims, in a land where the sword had always carried more weight than the pen, was no easy matter when written evidence of possession was virtually non-existent.
Walayat Shah’s toleration of the feringhis changed to a corroding and vindictive hatred. And with that hatred had arisen, like a phoenix from the fire, the memory of the past glories of his race. He had rarely thought of the history of his people while the Muslim kingdom of Oudh still stood, but now that Oudh - almost the last Mohammedan state in India - had fallen, he and many like him turned to look at the glorious past when the horned moon of Islam had blazed above India from Peshawar to the Deccan, and the Great Moguls had ruled all Hind. The fire of that great Empire had sunk now to a feeble flicker, as though it had been no more than the light of a thousand chirags - the small oil-lamps lit for the festival of Dewali - that together blaze like a golden bonfire, but which die out one by one as the oil burns low or the night winds blow. Only a few of the lamps that had once made that bright glare remained, for the hot winds of the warlike Mahrattas, of the Rajputs, of Guru Narnak, founder of the Sikhs, had extinguished them one by one. And then a greater wind had arisen: the cold wind of ‘John Company’, blowing in from beyond the Black Water and breathing upon the last dying flicker of the Empire of the Moguls.
The British had conquered the conquerors: Mahratta, Rajput and Sikh; and now, if the British themselves were to fall, chaos would follow. Out of that chaos might not the moon of Islam rise once more, and the followers of the Prophet rule the land as they had ruled it in the great days of Akbar - of Jehangir - of Shahjehan - of Aurungzebe, ‘Holder of the World’?
Walayat Shah, brooding on present calamity and past glory, listened to the words of those who preached a Jehad, and dreamed the Mohammedan dream. For now a Jehad meant far more than the spreading of the Faith and the slaying of unbelievers. It meant revenge; and perhaps, once more, an Empire.
‘He is changed even towards me, his wife, because my mother was a feringhi,’ said Ameera sadly, ‘and therefore I cannot ask thee to enter the Gulab Mahal. Some day, surely. But for the present it were better to keep away.’
And so that door was closed to Winter.
She had come back at last to Lucknow. But not to that charmed and peaceful starting-point whence she had hoped to recoup her strength, and find a purpose in the pattern of her life so that she might start out again with surer feet; no longer a child at the mercy of incomprehensible adult orders, but as herself, Winter de Ballesteros, released from her foolish dependence on the pasteboard figure of a non-existent knight, free of fear and loneliness and the agonizing, strangling, dragging ties of love, and able to stand alone.
The reiterated promise that one day she would return to the Gulab Mahal and then all would be well with her had grown too deeply into her consciousness to be eradicated, so that the Gulab Mahal had become far more than a mere memory of happiness. It was a spell … a charm … a philosopher’s stone that could transmute base metal into gold. The moon out of reach. She had seemed within reach of it at last, but she could not stretch out her hand and touch it, because the gate was shut against her.
Not wishing to distress Ameera, Winter did not even ask the way to the Rose Palace or in what part of the city it lay, and therefore did not even know if she passed it when she drove through Lucknow. She did not think so, since the houses in which the Europeans lived lay on the outskirts of the city or in the cantonments.
The city itself was a rabbit-warren of houses, shops, mosques, temples and palaces, narrow streets, narrower alleyways and crowded bazaars. Few Europeans chose to go there, for it seethed with discontent and bitterness, rage and rumours: ‘The sahibs will not rest until they have all Hind,’ ran the whispers. ‘Did they not have a treaty with the King, and have they not broken it? It is said that the last Lat Sahib gained honours from the Queen for stealing so much land, and now the new one means to steal more so that his honours may be the greater. Soon there will be no kingdoms in Hind, but only one land - and all of it the Company’s!’
The scores of men who besieged the courts daily, asking who would now pay their pensions, were told to wait. To wait … to wait. And while they waited, they starved.
‘Couldn’t be helped,’ said Mr Samuel Coombs, discussing the matter with the Commissioner of Lunjore over the port. ‘You can’t take over a chaotic mess like Oudh and turn it into a smooth-running concern in a few we
eks. It’s not possible. Augean Stables wasn’t in it, and Coverley Jackson ain’t a Hercules! He did his best of course, but his best wasn’t good enough … not much sympathy or understanding for the plight of all the poor devils who lost their livelihood and saw their way of life being swept into Limbo when we took over. And it was no secret that he spent half his time quarrelling with his assistants - all Oudh knew it, and that sort of thing don’t inspire confidence. Good thing he’s gone.’
Mr Coombs, like Mr Josh Cottar, was in business, and dealt in army contracts which were in the process of amassing him a large fortune. His business methods left much to be desired, but he was a shrewd man with a considerable knowledge of Oudh, and his independent status and large financial stake in the country gave him a clearer vision of the dangers inherent in the situation than those officials whose horizons were necessarily bounded by paper reports and red tape.
Mr Barton, who had no sympathy and little understanding for any problem regarding a subjugated race, contented himself with remarking that in his opinion far too much fuss was made over the natives these days. ‘Napoleon was right, b’ Gad,’ said Mr Barton. ‘A whiff of grapeshot is the only medicine that a rabble understands. But now that Lawrence has taken over, I suppose we shall see the population being pampered and petted beyond all bearing.’
Mr Coombs shook his head. ‘Not Lawrence. Justice ain’t pampering. By God, he’s a marvel!’ - Mr Coombs’s hoarse voice held an unexpected note of awe. ‘He hasn’t been in the place ten days, yet already one can feel the difference. Pity he wasn’t sent here at the start, I say.’
‘Very nearly was,’ interjected another guest, a burly, grizzled man with a bloodshot eye. ‘Fact! I’m told he offered for the post but his letter arrived too late, Canning had just appointed Jackson. Great pity. Jackson’s an able feller, but too hot-tempered. Lawrence has a temper too, but he seldom loses it. Patience of the East - and that’s a virtue in this country! Jackson should have been superseded months ago.’