A Singular Hostage Part 35

He fumbled across the fioor in the darkness, found his way around the bed to the little table in the corner, and lit the lamp.

AWAKENED by Dittoo's frightened shout, Mariana had reached for her boots. Then, her heart pounding, she had seized the lamp and dropped to her knees beside her bed. "If someone has come to harm you," she had whispered to the sleeping Saboor as she wrapped him in one of her shawls, "they must kill me first. Oh, Saboor, if only I had a sword ..."

Now as she sat upright on the edge of her bed, her dressing gown skirts spread widely about her, she could see Ha.s.san by her open doorway, his back to her, his shoulders heaving.

An authoritative male voice spoke. "You take charge of them. Say you caught them yourself. Yes, yes, of course, that is what a sentry is supposed to do. Now be gone, and good night."

Here was Dittoo, holding the lamp aloft, and now, suddenly, there was Ha.s.san, smelling foul, his face and clothes streaked with grease and dirt. He looked at her without speaking, his whole soul asking for Saboor.

Behind him Yar Mohammad craned to see inside.

Mariana pushed her skirts aside and got down on her knees. While Dittoo held up the lamp she lifted the edge of the bedspread. There under the bed lay Saboor where she had hidden him, wrapped in a nest of her shawls, his head turning toward them, his eyes open.

"An-nah."

"There, darling, it's all right now."

As she took hold of the shawls and pulled him toward her, she felt someone strike her violently from behind. Her back arching involuntarily, she let go of the shawls and clutched at her spine.

"Why, why?" she stammered, her face crumpling in pain, searching the four surprised faces above her.

Panting with shock, she tried to crawl away as Yar Mohammad's urgent voice pierced the ringing in her ears. "A snake must have bitten her. This is what happens when a viper strikes. They think someone has struck them from behind-look at her hands!"

A snake! She struggled to speak, to tell them she had looked under the bed, that she had even brought the lamp, but her voice had abandoned her.

Still on all fours, she watched Ha.s.san, his hands outstretched, s.n.a.t.c.h his son from the terrible nest of shawls. As her sight dimmed, she saw her four-poster bed upturned and Yar Mohammad pounce, a heavy blade fiashing in his hand.

Someone gripped her wrists. "There. Two puncture wounds."

Her bitten arm was on fire. She felt herself being dragged across the fioor. "Lift her from the other side," someone said. "We must get her to Shafi Sahib."

"No," another voice said, "she'll be unconscious soon. Yar Mohammad will fetch Shafi Sahib. Go, Yar Mohammad, take my horse."

Shafi Sahib. Friend of the magical Shaikh, interpreter of dreams. Why would the great Shafi Sahib come to her? Who was sucking at her wrist, spitting and cursing? Who prayed aloud, while a baby wailed, hopelessly?

An alien creature had invaded her body, and was scorching her from the inside. Too weak to cry out, she could not tell them of her agony, or beg them not to touch her. She thrashed, gurgling, and there was rustling and silence and a voice began to recite in an undertone.

She sank into blackness.

THE ship rocked. She could not see rigging above her, but she could feel the rolling of the deck. She strained to see ahead, and there, through the fog, glimmered a brilliant light. The waves beneath her murmured something she could not understand. Longing to reach the light, she tried to stretch out her hands. The ship was taking her there, taking her there.

SHE could breathe. The burning, although fierce, had abated, and she could breathe, shallow breaths at first, then deeper, sweeter ones. As she drank in the air, the voice went on, soothing and healing her. There was no sound of a baby crying. The light shone through her eyelids.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a blur of faces. Then the light went out and the singsong murmuring ceased. "Get another light," said someone. "I must be able to see her."

Did she know that voice?

"Who must see me?" she murmured into the darkness. What was this dark place? What language were they all speaking?

Several voices spoke at once. "Are you all right?" "Have you recovered?" "Can you breathe?"

"Yes." Her voice sounded curiously distant. Something unpleasant had dribbled from the corner of her mouth. Her hair was drenched. The pain in her arm was nearly gone.

"Can you sit up?"

"Yes, but I do not wish to," she said weakly.

Someone sighed. She heard the rustling sound of someone standing up. "Since she is now all right," said the familiar voice, "I shall go back. Yar Mohammad will see me to my tent."

WHEN she opened her eyes again, the lamp had been relit. The interior of the tent looked quite odd from where she lay on the fioor near her desk. Her dressing gown had bunched itself uncomfortably around her legs. Her chair stood a few feet away. Her bed now lay on its side, spilling bed linens over the striped fioor. Dittoo, holding Saboor, sat motionless in the corner. Ha.s.san crouched beside her, a hand to his head. Near the door, his eyes fixed on the sky outside, sat a heavyset stranger.

"I think," she said, "I would like to go to bed."

As Dittoo scrambled to his feet and began to scoop up the bedclothes, Saboor trotted toward her. He sat down with a little b.u.mp by her side, then reached out, round-eyed, and patted her arm. She tried to smile.

At a rustling outside the tent, she raised herself onto one elbow. In the doorway, their feet upon the fallen blind, stood the Misses Eden, their two faces fixed in horror as if they had come suddenly upon some fearful accident or scene of torture.

For a moment, there was silence. But for the quivering of Miss Emily's skirts, Mariana would have believed the figures in the doorway to be a delirium-induced tableau.

"I hope I have not caused a disturbance," Mariana said carefully. Ha.s.san pointed meaningfully at his mouth, then at hers. Mariana scrubbed her chin with a corner of her dressing gown, and found it had been smeared with something pink and slimy. She closed her eyes and subsided to the fioor, doomed, but too ill to care.

Miss Emily found her voice. "We have been called here, Mariana," she said, ignoring everyone else, "by the servants, who heard some very unexpected sounds coming from your tent. Get up at once. You are coming with us."

Hands raised Mariana. Illuminated by torches carried by Miss Emily's servants, she was half-carried past Ha.s.san, past Dittoo and Yar Mohammad.

"f.a.n.n.y," she heard Miss Emily say, "tell one of the servants to call the sentries."

"WE shall not ask you to explain now," said Miss Emily crisply, as she tucked Mariana into her bed, now hastily rea.s.sembled in her own large drawing room. "There will be time for that when you are suf?ciently recovered. You shall sleep here until we march tomorrow."

Through half-closed lids, Mariana could make out Miss Emily's little sofa, her bookstand, and several tables, each with an oil lamp. Someone had put a cold compress on her forehead. Miss f.a.n.n.y stood beside her sister, her lips tight.

"My sister and I," Miss Emily declared, turning to Miss f.a.n.n.y who nodded without speaking, "are determined to mention this to no one, at least for now. We request that you do the same, until something has been decided. In the meanwhile, you should rest.

"Whatever you have been up to," she added darkly, "is certain to have been most exhausting."

Mariana fioated into sleep.

Do not be foolish, Yar Mohammad," Shafi Sahib said from his seat on a borrowed mule, shortly after dawn. "How can you not see the importance of your work?"

The groom strode silently at the animal's head, Shafi Sahib's reins in his hand. Around them on the march, the bra.s.s ankle bells of the camels c.h.i.n.ked and sang.

Perhaps he should have kept quiet and not bothered Shafi Sahib with his troubles, but his sense of failure had been too great. What had he done to earn the little ceramic vial that had been put into his hand? What had he found to offer those about him in this strange and powerful time?

"Of course your work is important," the old man continued, letting go of the saddle with one hand to search for something among his garments. "What would have happened if you had not been there to stay Yusuf Bhatti from slaying the madman on the road to Lah.o.r.e when these events first began? Without your intervention, the man would have died, I would not have received his message, and we would not have guessed at the ident.i.ty of the Guardian."

Encouraged, Yar Mohammad looked up.

"It was you," Shafi Sahib added, gripping the saddle one-handed, his beads held daringly in his free hand, "who delivered our messages to the young guardian memsahib, you who provided the child's first morsels of food after his rescue. You fought for them on the road to Kasur and sat guard over Saboor's place of refuge when the child thief came to steal him. It was you who recognized the viper's bite, and summoned me to save the Guardian's life."

The old man smiled down from his swaying perch. "You, Yar Mohammad," he said, his voice lifting, "have been given the duty of protecting the Guardian. Your little vial was full when you showed it in your dream to Shaikh Waliullah. I believe it is full even now."

Shafi Sahib was tired. The old man's head drooped. Yar Mohammad walked on, breathing deeply of the morning air.

"I understand we had some excitement last night," remarked an aidede-camp as he helped himself to omelette aux herbes Indiennes in the dining tent. "It seems that two men tried to rob this compound."

Lord Auckland looked up, scowling. Mariana stared down at her plate. The Eden sisters made a point of looking neither at each other nor at Mariana.

"Yes," said another aide. "One of them tried the old trick"-he coughed delicately-"of covering himself with grease."

The first aide smiled broadly over his b.u.t.tered toast. "I heard one of them actually got past the guard and tried to get into the tents, and-"

"Absolute nonsense!" Major Byrne's face had reddened. He cleared his throat noisily. "Nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort." Avoiding the Governor-General's eye, he inclined his head gallantly toward the Misses Eden. "Your compound is impregnable, ladies. You must have no fear on that account. Both men were caught by the sentries well before they attempted to get in."

He glared at the aides. "Do not let these young men frighten you. They have no idea what they're talking about. And now, ladies, Lord Auckland," he concluded with a decisive little nod, "if you will excuse me."

Miss Emily regarded him silently over the rim of her coffee cup as he strode away.

Lord Auckland nodded vaguely in Byrne's direction, then pushed back his chair. "Emily, my dear, it seems that we are to be relatively safe from the natives this morning. I thought we might take a drive before lunch. There may be some interesting ruins on the way to Kasur." He smiled hopefully at his sister from beneath dusty eyebrows.

"I am so sorry, George," said Miss Emily, glancing reproachfully at Mariana, "but Miss Givens was quite ill last night. I cannot go out until Dr. Drummond has seen her."

Mariana pushed smoked fish onto her fork. Miss Emily Miss Emily, she ordered silently, take the drive, take the drive take the drive, take the drive!

"I had hoped," Miss Emily said, as they waited in her drawing room for Dr. Drummond, "that we had heard the last of your extraordinary behavior."

Mariana touched the healing puncture marks on her wrist. She would not explain or apologize, whatever they said to her.

"But not at all." Miss Emily rose from her seat and crossed the tent to her little bookshelf. "Since then," she went on, turning back to Mariana and folding her arms across her bosom, "you have not ceased to astonish us. Is there any point in my asking why we found you last night lying on your fioor in your nightclothes in the company of not one but two strange native men?"

Mariana's bed, now tightly made, stood on one side of the tent. No one looked at it.

"If you are going mad," Miss Emily p.r.o.nounced as she lowered herself to the sofa beside her sister, "your behavior can be explained, although, of course, it can never be excused."

She opened her hands. "Why, Mariana? Why the foul-smelling native men? Why the unexplained baby? Why the overturned bed, the general disarray?"

"There was a viper," Mariana said as coolly as civility allowed, "under my bed."

Why did she bother to tell them anything?

A servant bowed in the doorway. "Doctor Sahib has come," he said in polite, accented English.

Dr. Drummond stood over her in his old-fashioned clothes, smelling of tobacco. "Now, Miss Givens," he said, bending to look cautiously at her over the tops of his spectacles, "how are we feeling today?"

He pursed his lips. "I understand," he continued, nodding toward the sofa and the upright Misses Eden, "that the timely arrival of these ladies at your tent last night prevented your meeting a most unpleasant fate.

"What none of us can grasp is how these things keep happening to you. Do you you know, Miss Givens? Hmmmn?" know, Miss Givens? Hmmmn?"

They already believed her a lunatic. Nothing she told them would change their minds. She turned over her wrist. "A snake bit me last night." She pointed to the marks. "I was very ill then, but I am much better now."

"Now, Miss Givens," the doctor said reprovingly, looking not at her but at Miss Emily, "we all know there is no cure for poisonous snakebite."

"Yes, Dr. Drummond, but-"

"No cure at all," he repeated in a firm tone, smiling falsely. "You had a narrow escape last night, to be sure, but we all know that it was not not from poisonous snakebite. Nonetheless, if it will make you feel better, I will have a look at those marks. from poisonous snakebite. Nonetheless, if it will make you feel better, I will have a look at those marks.

"She could, of course," he said to the Eden ladies, taking Mariana's wrist in his hand, "have been injured by one of the men. Miss Givens, do you mind coming to the light?"

Injured by one of the men indeed! If Miss f.a.n.n.y had not been watching, Mariana would have made a face behind the doctor's back.

He turned her wrist this way and that, looking down his nose at the two small marks. After a moment, he nodded. "You may sit down now, Miss Givens.

"These are clearly puncture wounds," he p.r.o.nounced, drawing out his words, pointing a stubby finger at Mariana's wrist. "They do do resemble marks left by the fangs of a snake, but if they resemble marks left by the fangs of a snake, but if they are are bite marks, the snake would have been of a rare, nonpoisonous variety. In any case," he went on, "as they are nearly healed, the marks have nothing whatever to do with the events of last night." He shook his head. "I really do not know what to make of all this." bite marks, the snake would have been of a rare, nonpoisonous variety. In any case," he went on, "as they are nearly healed, the marks have nothing whatever to do with the events of last night." He shook his head. "I really do not know what to make of all this."

"May I please," Mariana asked, struggling to keep her tone level, "tell you the real real story of what happened last night?" story of what happened last night?"

Greeted with silent surprise, she took a deep breath and plunged on. "The thieves we discussed at breakfast this morning," she began, "were child stealers. They did indeed get into the compound. In fact, they nearly got into my tent."

Miss f.a.n.n.y's mouth opened. "Nearly got in? But Emily and I saw them clearly!" got in? But Emily and I saw them clearly!"

"No, Miss f.a.n.n.y," Mariana disagreed patiently. "That was the bridegroom from the wedding, and another man I had not seen before." was the bridegroom from the wedding, and another man I had not seen before."

Miss Emily's face turned pink. "Are you trying to tell us," she cried, "that the filthy creature beside you was your husband husband?"

Mariana glared at her. "No, Miss Emily. I said I would not not marry him. I am certain you heard me say so. In any case, he was dirty because he had fought with a child thief who had gotten into the compound, and was trying to steal his baby from my tent." marry him. I am certain you heard me say so. In any case, he was dirty because he had fought with a child thief who had gotten into the compound, and was trying to steal his baby from my tent."

"Baby?" Dr. Drummond's jaw hung open.

Miss Emily was now scarlet. "You will not speak to me like that, Mariana," she snapped.

"Whose baby?" The doctor was looking avidly from face to face. baby?" The doctor was looking avidly from face to face.

"I think, Dr. Drummond," said Miss Emily, her eyes narrowing, her tone a potent combination of charm and force, "that we have no further need to take up your valuable time."

"But, Miss Eden, we have not yet discovered-"

Miss Emily smiled thinly. "Thank you so very much very much, Dr. Drummond. f.a.n.n.y, please see the doctor out."

Mariana caught the doctor's disappointed glance over his shoulder as Miss f.a.n.n.y, mute and very pale, ushered him from the tent.

Miss Emily's gaze was inescapable. "The baby, Mariana, is the key to this entire disgraceful story, is he not? Your 'father-in-law' is Shaikh Wallahwallah, the magician grandfather who was said to have spirited the Maharajah's baby hostage from the Golden Temple."

Mariana nodded.

"The missing baby, therefore, is now your stepson."