A Singular Hostage Part 34

The uniformed sentries stood at attention by the gate, ignoring the lively activity in front of them. Jagoo pushed past his companions and edged up to the red wall, near the two hors.e.m.e.n, who had stopped a little distance from the sentries. Once there, he bent and feigned a fit of coughing. The two riders had begun speaking to each other. Jagoo stopped coughing and listened.

"He said to turn left as you enter," Yusuf Bhatti was saying. "Her tent stands alone in the corner, there." He pointed to his left, where the red wall turned away from the road, thirty yards away.

Nodding, Ha.s.san dismounted.

"May the Most Gracious guide you," Yusuf offered, reaching for Ha.s.san's hand. "I'll stay here in case, Allah forbid, something goes wrong."

Ha.s.san waved, then started toward the entrance, his lips moving as he walked.

As Ha.s.san moved away, Yusuf leaned from his saddle. "You are allowed through the gate, are you not, Yar Mohammad?" he asked the groom.

"Ji, Sahib."

"Then go inside and guard Memsahib's tent."

Jagoo had crept near to hear the two men's words. When he turned back to look at the road, he stopped short, eyes wide. Beside Yusuf Bhatti's horse, Yar Mohammad, too, froze where he stood. Yusuf jerked upright in his saddle, blinked, then blinked again.

In the time it had taken for the onlookers to glance away, Ha.s.san should have covered ten or twelve feet of the distance from his horse to the red wall. But he was not there. Yusuf, Yar Mohammad, the tracker, Jagoo, and the ruddy-faced boy all searched the avenue with their eyes. Ha.s.san was nowhere to be seen.

Yusuf smiled to himself. Now, he was sure of it. Shafi Sahib had told Ha.s.san one of the secrets of the Karakoyia Brotherhood. He also knew for certain that he would never learn what that secret was.

"LIGHT the lamp, Dittoo, it is too dark to read."

Inside her tent, Mariana sat up, propped on several pillows, an open letter in one hand, Saboor's arm in the other.

"Saboor darling, sit down," she pleaded as he tugged away from her. "See, you can play with my ribbons. They are there, on the bed."

"An-nah." He p.r.o.nounced the last part of her name carefully, his eyes fixed on hers, then dropped down and, digging his hands and knees into her lap, crawled toward the little bedside table. She pulled him back, holding her letter safely out of the way, as he reached for the tinderbox.

His little body felt so soft under his clothes. She retrieved him, kissing a little hand that smelled of babyhood and dust. He pulled it away and wrapped his fingers around her gold necklace.

"And take Saboor away," she told Dittoo, unclasping the small fingers. "He is everywhere at once."

Dittoo shambled out from the corridor, wheedling as he came. "A-jao, Baba, come, I will find you something very nice for you, yes, very nice."

"An-nah, I want An-nah!" Saboor complained as Dittoo carried him, kicking, to a corner of the tent.

His health had certainly improved. Mariana made a kissing sound. "Shhhhh, Baba. There, there, my love, it is only for a little while."

She held her letter to the light while Dittoo's singsong nonsense fioated across the fioor. Three months old, yet new to Mariana, Mama's firmly written words carried with them the very air of home.

We all missed you dreadfully at Freddie's birthday party. Several neighbors came and Freddie rushed about with their children until he became overexcited and had to be put to bed.He spends more and more time with Papa. I pray that he will, in time, take Ambrose's place in your father's heart.As for you, my darling, remember that you are not bound to marry in India. If no young man there makes you happy, you are to come home. Do not rush into a misalliance in order to please us.If you should return unmarried, our shoulders are broad enough to bear whatever society has to say.

Those rea.s.suring words did little to take away the jolting pain Mariana had felt when she read a second letter that had come together with her mother's. It saddens me immeasurably It saddens me immeasurably, Fitzgerald had written from the army camp, to know what scandal, what utter disgrace you have brought upon yourself to know what scandal, what utter disgrace you have brought upon yourself. I excuse myself immediately after dinner each night to escape hearing the shameful things our officers are saying about you. How could you have a.s.sociated so recklessly, so indecently I excuse myself immediately after dinner each night to escape hearing the shameful things our officers are saying about you. How could you have a.s.sociated so recklessly, so indecently, with a native man? Who will dare to be your friend now with a native man? Who will dare to be your friend now?

It was no use hoping. Fitzgerald was gone forever. Who would would be her friend? Mariana's call on Miss Emily had been even more unpleasant than she had expected. be her friend? Mariana's call on Miss Emily had been even more unpleasant than she had expected.

"You have not only ruined yourself, Mariana," Miss Emily had declared flatly from her pillows, "you have also grievously wronged Lieutenant Marks. We shall not easily forgive you. We shall not mention it again," she had continued, as she adjusted the ribbons on her bed jacket, "but I will say this. You must accept your just deserts. Wear gloves to meals and do not attempt to join the conversation. Only pray that, one day, you will be forgiven."

Her duty done, Mariana would not call on hateful Miss Emily again. Miss f.a.n.n.y was no use either. "It would have been better if you had not come to India, Mariana," she had said mournfully. "You are much too adventurous for this country."

No, she would never seek their approval again.

Although the Eden sisters and Lord Auckland, even all the other officers combined, could not frighten Mariana, one thought did bring her an ambushing panic. Once the scandal reached England, it would break her family's heart. She could bear being an outcast here in India, but the thought of her family at home suffering for her mistakes was too miserable to endure.

Of course, Lord Auckland had given orders that her story not be repeated; but there had been a hundred witnesses to her declaration before the court, to her wedding- Such a tale was too dark, too exciting not to be told. Within days of the camp's arrival at Calcutta, it would certainly escape Lord Auckland's censorship and swiftly reach every drawing room in the city, to be embellished with false, d.a.m.ning details of her bold enticement of native men. From there, it would spread, carried by every fresh ship bound for England.

Her letter lay on the bed beside her. Mama and Papa loved her. They would go on loving her, no matter what she did, no matter what society thought. She longed to sit down to Sunday lunch with them all, even the always critical Aunt Rachel....

Why not leave now? Why not arrange to travel by palanquin ahead of the camp? Lord Auckland and his sisters expected to stop at Simla for several months on the way back to Calcutta. Even after they resumed traveling, they would stop many times along the way, to allow local Rajahs to entertain Lord Auckland. It might be a year before the camp arrived in Calcutta. If Mariana left within a few days and traveled without stopping, she would reach there many months ahead of her story. If she were fortunate, a pa.s.senger ship would be waiting on the Hooghly River. She might well be on the high seas long before the scandal broke in Calcutta.

Uncle Adrian would arrange everything, of course he would! She would write to him as soon as the camp crossed the Sutlej River into British territory.

In England, she would have time to explain, to prepare her family and their friends. It was, perhaps, too late to worry about society, but she could protect her family from hearing malicious lies from other lips.

In the corner, a pacified Saboor squealed with pleasure. Mariana pushed away sadness. She had always known she must leave him. He would be happy without her. As long as he had someone to guard and to love him, he would be quite safe. Ha.s.san's fear must surely be exaggerated.

Someone scratched at the door blind. Dittoo stopped singing and stood before it, Saboor in his arms.

"An-nah." Distracted, Saboor fixed his eyes on the doorway as Dittoo turned and rushed toward the bed, his feet thumping on the striped rug, and thrust the child at Mariana.

"I have come to see Saboor Baba," said a male voice from outside.

Who was that? Who knew Saboor was here? Mariana held her breath and pushed Saboor down beside her on the bed, and covered him with her shawl. "Quiet," she cautioned softly, a finger to her lips. "Chup. Do not speak." She nodded to Dittoo.

"Who is it?" he asked, his voice cracking with nerves.

"It is Ha.s.san Ali Khan," said the voice with some annoyance. "Open the blind."

Mariana sucked in her breath. Beside her, Saboor struggled to sit up.

Dittoo fiung aside the blind. Ha.s.san stepped in from the darkness outside.

"Abba! Abba!" As Dittoo stooped his way backward out of the doorway, Saboor scrambled off the bed and danced to his father. His face tilted upward, he braced himself against a Turkish-trousered knee.

Something about Ha.s.san reminded Mariana of Saboor. It was the candor in his expression, perhaps, or a softness in his eyes. He looked strained. His coat smelled of horses. Rings gleamed on his hands. Behind her back, Mama's open letter beckoned from the bedspread.

She hardened herself against him. "Yes, Saboor is safe here. But there is something I must tell you."

Ha.s.san did not look at her. Instead, he surveyed her tent. "How can you live like this?" He poked a long finger at her spa.r.s.e furniture. "Where do you sit?"

She pointed to her upright chair, wobbly now from hard travel. "There, but that is not-"

"Where are your furnishings? Your carpets? I can't have my son living under these conditions. For all we know, he may be in this camp for months."

"I-"

"You need better arrangements," he interrupted, frowning as he lifted Saboor into his arms. "I must make them tonight."

Saboor wrapped his arms about Ha.s.san's neck. Father and son regarded Mariana with identical gazes.

"A letter has come for me," she said firmly, changing the subject. "I must return to Calcutta at once."

Ha.s.san waved a dismissing hand. "It is late, Mariam," he said curtly. He put down his son. "I must hurry."

"But that is not how you-"

Before she finished speaking the door blind closed behind him.

Saboor stared past Mariana's worried face, refusing to meet her eyes or acknowledge her kisses. "How has he become like this?" she wailed, as she handed him to Dittoo. "He could not have gone deaf in one minute. What is the matter with him?"

"I do not know, Begum Sahib." Dittoo bounced the pa.s.sive, unsmiling child, then shook his head. "I have never seen such a thing before."

Saboor's abrupt change of mood had begun the moment his father left them. As the door blind shut behind Ha.s.san, Saboor had gone still. It seemed as if his whole being had turned suddenly inward, out of Mariana's reach.

For an hour she had rocked him, crooning, searching her memory for a cause. She had examined him with nervous fingers, looking for signs of the spider or scorpion sting that might have paralyzed him somehow. Finding nothing, she had crooned his name and tried to force him to look at her, but he would only stare past her, his energetic, affectionate little self replaced by a stiff, unloving stranger. She was baffied. What could they have done or said to change him so? Surely he had not divined her plan to leave him and return home? But if he had not, why had he retreated into silence, as if his heart were crushed?

"Please, Dittoo," she implored, "do something."

A bath did not help, nor did Dittoo's arguing or Mariana's embraces.

Later that evening, Mariana sat up waiting, still dressed, with Saboor asleep beside her. Ha.s.san would return soon. When he did, she would find words to explain her leaving. For now, all she could do was to sit while the timepiece at her bedside ticked away the pa.s.sing time.

Mariam. He had called her Mariam.

ON the moonlit avenue, Jagoo nodded to the boy and moved along the red wall near to where the riders had pointed. Here the canvas sagged and billowed. He sat down again and stretched his body out, as if readying himself for sleep.

But he did not sleep. Instead, he began gently, un.o.btrusively, to smooth away stones, twigs, and small obstructions from the ground under the wall.

It was nearly midnight. The traffic had died on the avenue. Bats swooped overhead. Hollow coughing came from nearby servants' quarters. In the distance, men laughed. Someone was singing.

The tracker yawned. "I want to eat," the boy whispered beside him. "I can smell cooking over there." He jerked his chin toward the horse lines.

They watched Jagoo take things out of a cloth bag. First came something that looked like a greasy leather pouch. Next came a teninch knife.

Jagoo motioned to the boy, a silent, significant gesture. Then, the pouch concealed again in his clothes, the knife between his teeth, he slid in one smooth, soundless motion under the red wall, and was gone.

Horses approached on the avenue. The tracker stiffened instantly, his breath hissing as the two riders came into view again, this time followed by a laden donkey cart.

The tall rider dismounted and started toward the guarded entrance. From where the tracker sat, he could make out that the man's lips were moving. The tracker turned his head and glanced at the boy, who had gripped his arm, his eyes wide and worried. When the tracker turned again to look at the place where the tall rider should have been walking, the avenue was empty.

The tracker shook the boy's fingers from his arm and stood. Keeping his body flat against the wall, he crept away, leaving the guarded entrance, the laden donkey cart, and the second horseman behind him. Breathing hard with fright, he hurried to the corner where the red canvas wall turned away from the avenue. Once around the corner, he ran through the dark, his clothes billowing and fiapping around him, his sandals slapping on the hard clay ground.

ATTENDING to a personal need, Dittoo crouched behind the thicket of guy ropes that supported Memsahib's tent, his face turned to the red wall. He looked over his shoulder, his dhoti draped discreetly about his legs, considering for the hundredth time the extraordinary fact of his memsahib's marriage to this man Ha.s.san.

How would his life change after this event? Time would tell.

One thing was certain. No wife of Ha.s.san Ali Khan Sahib would be allowed a male servant. But, without maidservants for Memsahib, how could Dittoo escape going into her tent? Without him, how was she to have her morning coffee, or her bed made, her lamp lit or her side table dusted?

The canvas beside him trembled. He looked along the wall in time to see an arm, then a leg, then a whole man appear silently from under the wall near Memsahib's tent.

Dittoo hastily adjusted his clothes and crept closer. When he was near enough to see the man clearly, he stopped and held his breath.

The man had not seen Dittoo. He stood, a shadow in the moonlight, and reached with a swift movement under his long shirt. His loose cotton trousers dropped to the ground.

He stepped out of them and then, naked under his shirt, began to smear something from a greasy pouch onto his legs and b.u.t.tocks. That done, he pulled off the shirt.

Yar Mohammad had come, hours ago, to guard Memsahib's tent. Ghostlike in his gray shawl, he now sat gazing into s.p.a.ce beside her doorway, unaware of the naked intruder who had now finished smearing his chest and back. As Dittoo watched from the shadows, the man bent over, his skin gleaming faintly, and withdrew something from his discarded clothes.

It was a long, cruel-looking knife. Dittoo went cold.

Too terrified to move, Dittoo crouched by the canvas wall, as silently, slowly, his eyes fixed on Yar Mohammad, the intruder crept forward, the knife ready in his hand.

Dittoo found his voice. At his yell of warning, Yar Mohammad jerked his head up. Seeing the man, he reached, scrabbling, for his own weapon.

At that instant, a third man appeared. Before Dittoo could make another sound, the man began to run toward them. Dittoo held his breath. Whoever this was, he must have seen the scene beside the tent door. Was he a guard or another a.s.sailant?

He was neither. It was Ha.s.san Ali Khan Sahib himself, breathing hard, running full tilt at the intruder.

His hands gripping his face, Dittoo watched Ha.s.san Sahib throw himself forward past Yar Mohammad. Ignoring the raised knife, he drove the intruder into the doorway of Memsahib's tent, bringing the door blind thumping, unrolling to the ground.

Gasping and spitting, the two men grappled in the stony dust. Fighting to gain a purchase on the greased body, Ha.s.san Sahib cried out as the naked man slid from his grip and darted toward the red wall.

The intruder fiung himself down, caught the canvas wall with one hand and began, lizardlike, to slither under it, still holding his knife; but Yar Mohammad was too quick for him. Throwing himself at the man, he caught one greased ankle, then another, then, grunting with effort, dragged the intruder by his feet from beneath the wall and across the ground to the tent.

Naked, bleeding, and covered with dust, the man wept aloud as Ha.s.san Sahib grasped him by the hair.

"Piece of filth," Ha.s.san Sahib rasped as he beat the man's head on the ground. "My wife, my son!"

"Oh, Sahib, have pity!" the man wailed. "I am only a small thief in search of trinkets. Had I known it was your family-"

"Pig! Son of shame! I know who you are, what you want. Yar Mohammad, get his knife!"

Dittoo shivered as he watched Yar Mohammad turn the man roughly onto his stomach and force a knee into his back. What a pity he himself was too old to help!

Shouting came from the entrance. Someone was arguing with the sentries, trying to get in. A moment later, a guard appeared, followed by a burly man who strode behind him, dragging a frightened-looking boy.

"I know nothing, Huzoors, nothing at all." Arms over his head, the boy cowered before the sentry, babbling with fright.

"Be quiet. See, guard, I told you there were others," said the burly man. "I only wish I had caught the one that ran away."

As the sentry poked at the greased man with his bayonet, Dittoo suddenly remembered Memsahib and Saboor Baba. He stepped over the fallen blind and into the tent.

"Memsahib, Memsahib," he whispered, uncomfortably aware that Ha.s.san Sahib would likely shout at him for entering, "are you all right?"