The Strangler Vine, page 28
‘Though it must be said that a six-foot native woman is hardly a common sight,’ said Mountstuart.
I was aghast. ‘You joke.’
‘I was never more serious in my life, William.’
I protested that my Hindoostanee had come on in great strides, that I should be hobbled and of little use in a fight. I pointed out that Mountstuart had far more practice in playing a woman. I pleaded that I might be a hooded, mute native man. Blake was immoveable.
‘Don’t be downcast, Avery. After so many years of reading Xavier’s verses, you will be able to tell your own tale of how you escaped the Thugs disguised as a native matron. You’ll be the toast of Calcutta. And it is really not so uncommon. Why, at any one time throughout the country hundreds of young men escape from prisons, and steal in and out of zenanas to visit their lovers, dressed as women.’ He was only half-joking.
There was little to be done. Blake produced cloth from his packs, Mountstuart and he wrapped their heads in pugrees, tied their trousers into rough dhotis, and wrapped blankets over their shoulders and heads. I, meanwhile, was swathed head to foot in the remaining blankets, and gave up my boots in favour of sandals – it was all I could do to prevent Blake from burying them. Mountstuart insisted that he inspect my walk, which he told me was not nearly demure enough. He demonstrated his patented ‘begum’s carriage’ – ‘Young man, I have used this many times in tight scrapes,’ he said – and insisted that I imitate him. Blake watched.
The moon was high and the night clear, and our strange little caravan was well lit: Mountstuart astride the donkey; Blake, his head hooded in his blanket and limping a little; and I, constrained from head to foot by my hateful robes. Blake’s plan was to gain the road, then walk parallel to it through the trees as far as we could before dawn. At first my sandalled feet caught on every creeper and root, and though they permitted me to uncover my face, I was regularly admonished for lifting my skirts too high as I strode. But the night was cool, and I was protected from the worst of the biting insects, and with every step we drew closer to Mirzapore. It was almost pleasant. One could hear the chirp of humming creatures and occasional night calls – the chuck chuck of nightjars, the screech of an owl, the cackle of some sinister hunting animal. Once we tiptoed past an old broken temple, fearing to rouse any holy man who might make his home there. The hours passed.
Just before sunrise the trees thinned and we found ourselves in the fields on the outskirts of another village. Several had the small covered platforms on which labourers kept watch for animals coming to eat the crops. At this time of year we did not expect to encounter watchers, but we were careful. We had agreed that we would avoid such places until we found a settlement large enough for a bazaar of sufficient size that we would not be too conspicuous. We walked deeper into the trees, found a hollow beneath a spreading tree surrounded by high grasses, and slept.
When I woke, Blake had gone to survey the village. I waited, the emptiness in my stomach almost painful. Mountstuart woke and looked about, ill-humouredly. He did not acknowledge my morning greeting. Blake returned with some bread. It was hardly enough to feed all three of us, and he was solemn and once again seemed preoccupied.
‘Really, Jem,’ Mountstuart said testily, ‘the bleeding heart is too much. It may be some poor native’s supper, but it is our survival.’
‘It is not that,’ said Blake sombrely. ‘We haven’t shaken them. They’re still after us. They asked about three Europeans. Or if anyone had seen any group of three travellers. We could wait until they pass on, but the village is too small to steal from without attracting attention. And we must get you to Mirzapore. I reckon it as twelve or thirteen kos. Not more than thirty miles. We must trust to our disguises and take to the road, it’s busy enough.’
‘But you have hardly slept,’ I said.
‘And there is no need to make speed on my account,’ said Mountstuart, almost haughtily.
‘Xavier, you took the store. You took it all. There is none left.’
‘I had to, Jem. Besides, it was mine. And I am sure you have a little left somewhere.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Do not give me that accusing look, young man,’ Mountstuart said, looking at me. ‘You understand nothing!’
‘I am not giving you any kind of a look!’ I answered irritably. ‘And why can you not for once use my name? I do have a name, you know.’
‘Xavier can’t remember anyone’s names, never could. Too much trouble.’
‘He knows your name,’ I said accusingly.
Blake did not dignify this with a reply.
It was a wide dirt track, not unlike the Poona road we had taken south, but it was busier – most of the time. We met herds of goats, groups of singing pilgrims, a series of camel caravans, beggars and holy men. Then there were long periods when the road was empty. I could not decide which I liked less. When the road was busy I was stared at, no doubt because I was perceptibly taller than any woman on the road. I shrank from the scrutiny, pushing into the back of my hood and looking down so I could see even less. When it was empty I expected that small party of musicians with a mule at any moment. I should have felt better if I had not felt so confined and constrained by my skirts, or if I had had a weapon of some kind, but Blake had our one knife. And we made slow progress because of my woman’s garb and because Mountstuart had trouble remaining on the donkey, and so I had to hold on to him. As the day continued, he became testy. He began to slouch and sway, and to mutter in English that his limbs were aching and that he needed to rest. In vain we frowned at him, and Blake rebuked him in some unfamiliar dialect, but he ignored us. Blake, meanwhile, acted as our scout, falling behind to see who was coming, or striding ahead to survey what would greet us.
It was early afternoon and the road was quite empty when he ran up behind us.
‘They are coming up behind us. Maybe a quarter of a mile. We cannot outdistance them.’
Chapter Fifteen
A head of us was a small battered stone Hindoo temple with the usual steep carved steeple, and a little tank next to a large neem tree. Sitting rather glumly beneath it was an unkempt old man, one of those sadoos or holy men who attach themselves to old shrines or temples and live off what they can beg. He had a white beard with a knot tied into it, and his ribs and his forehead were painted chalk white. He wore nothing but an old yellow dhoti, and placed before him there was an old wooden bowl. There was no question but that he had seen us. In any case, the jangal had thinned and retreated to the hillsides some way away, and around us was an area of scrub in which it would not be easy to hide. With Mountstuart unable to walk, there was no hope of running to the shelter of the trees in time.
Blake approached the old man. At first the old native refused to look at him and shook his head. Then he spoke in a high querulous voice.
‘He says if he lies about us and they find us, they will come back and kill him. He says if he helps us and they find out, they will kill us and then him,’ Blake said. But he did not give up. He sat down and began to talk, pointing at Mountstuart and myself. The minutes passed and my impatience mounted – soon they would be able to see us and there would be no escape – but I feared to speak lest I spoil Blake’s argument. Leaving Mountstuart sagging on the donkey, I approached Blake and tapped him on the shoulder. I could hear the pleading in his voice. He looked up and pulled my hood off, and went on speaking to the sadoo.
When he finished speaking, the sadoo contemplated us for some minutes. His face was a picture of worry. But Blake had softened his heart. He stood and gestured towards the little temple. I helped Mountstuart from the donkey and supported him in. The sadoo showed Blake a place to tether the beast where it was just hidden from the road, and then he too came in. There was barely room for all of us, and Blake and I stood to give Mountstuart room enough to sit. The sadoo propped what had once been the temple’s wooden door, now rotted and splintered, against the lintel and took his place under his tree.
We did not wait long. We could hear them coming, the voices and the ass with its little tinkling bells. They stopped to speak to the sadoo. I held my breath and looked at Blake and prayed that Mountstuart would not forget himself. The sadoo answered calmly enough. There were a number of exchanges. Blake listened intently. Someone walked round the circumference of the building, and then the party seemed to stop. I realized after a few moments they were taking water from the tank. For several minutes nothing was said. Then someone mounted the little steps to the temple entrance. Blake closed his eyes. There was a hearty blow on the door. It rocked but did not shift. As one, we pressed ourselves back into the shadows, though had the door opened we would all have been instantly visible. Standing on that top step, but inches from us, one of our pursuers barked out something to the sadoo. Back came his voice, calm, reedy and insistent. The footsteps descended. There were the sounds of baggage hitched up, and the tinkling of the ass’s bells, and they seemed to be off.
We remained in that little space for what seemed like an age. The ass’s bells rang in my ears for long after it must have ambled out of earshot. The sadoo came and with some effort pushed the door away, and we spilled out into the air. Blake lifted Mountstuart on to the donkey as gently as he could, thanked the sadoo and explained that to our shame we had nothing to give him. He shook his head, looked at us shrewdly and raised his palms upward. I understood he was giving us his blessing.
‘He says in case they turn back we can walk into the trees, and as long as we don’t stray too far from the edge, we will never be far from the road. He reckons there is a town ten miles on with a good-sized bazaar. There is a dak bungalow there.’
We turned from the road and walked through the scrub into the trees. We stopped to rest among the trees for a while, then pressed on as night fell. The land began to rise and off ahead, darker than the sky, we could see the sides of the Vindhya mountains. Mountstuart grumbled a little and began to shake. Blake took off his own blanket and wrapped it around him. For several hours we walked in near silence. Then Mountstuart began to talk in a taut whisper.
‘You know, Jem, I cannot remember my own lines. They were all in my head, but now I cannot remember them.’
Some minutes later he said, ‘I am sorry, Jem. I am truly sorry. I am the wreck of myself, Jem, I should never have come back. But you should have come to England with me. We would both have been better there.’
‘There was nothing for me in England, Xavier.’
‘You would have saved yourself this. You would not still be serving those damned bastards.’
‘You came back.’
‘The Board wanted me. They were so insistent. I was the only man for the task. How could I refuse? All was well until Jubbulpore. I simply need a little regularly, and then I am almost as I was. But of course Sleeman – dull puritan that he is – has banned the sale of opium in the bazaar at Jubbulpore. Finding it was harder, and it made me a little … erratic. Then in the cave, in the dark, alone, I could not think. The lines would not come. And they were so generous with it.’ He laughed drily and it turned into a cough. ‘And it relieved so much. The lines poured into me.’
A little while later he said, ‘Let me tell you the story, young man, of my first encounter with Jem.’
His voice rallied a little and he pulled himself up. ‘It was in the Bangbazaar in Calcutta. As I wandered through the stalls, I heard a screaming argument, a cacophany of adults shouting, and in their midst a little piping monkey voice, swearing fluently in English and Hindoostanee and something else I later discovered to be Irish. I turned a corner and found a crowd of furious shopkeepers closing in on a shrunken little urchin boy with the unmistakeable pinched features of the English lower orders. He was screaming back at them in perfectly colloquial – if profane – Hindoostanee. I thought he must be about eleven years of age, but later reckoned him to be fourteen.’
Mountstuart’s voice trembled with anger and affection all at once. Blake was silent.
‘He was no better than a thief. Indeed, he was a thief. His parents had been hanged or transported, I know not, and he had been sent out on the Company’s shilling as a drummer boy, and now he had been caught stealing. The scene was most diverting, but I was curious about the creature, so I pushed my way into the crowd and offered to pay off the shopkeepers – it cost me a goodly sum – and caught him by the ear before he could run off. He had been in Calcutta for six months. In that time, he had taught himself the dialect of the bazaar and a deal of Irish from the common soldiers in his troop.
‘He was a trial to one and all, one and all, disobedient and insolent, and he had a remarkable talent for filching and thievery and all manner of dishonesty. And he had a magpie mind, which had picked up all kinds of strange and glistening bits of fact and nonsense. I had a fancy to do something with his talents, and an idea of what he might be good for, and his regiment was not sorry to see him go. I found a Company moonshee and put him to work: his letters, Hindoostanee, then Sanskrit and Persian. But he was a little animal, a proper little criminal.’
His voice dropped as if he had used it all up. ‘He would collect his daily grog ration in a water skin inside his trousers, and sell it on at a profit to the soldiers more thirsty than himself. But we beat that kind of conduct out of him.’
A little later he said, ‘I am getting old, Jem.’
He continued to shake. Blake stopped, carefully rearranged Mountstuart’s blankets, opened the water bottle, poured a little into the cap and gave it to him.
When the dawn came we were at the foot of a fortress town that looked more than promising. There was no argument this time, we would all go in together. We were at the end of our strength and if we could not find food or help here, it would be hard indeed to go on. Blake said there should be a decent-sized bazaar, and if there was a working dak post we might exchange the donkey for food and shelter and send a missive by dak runner to Mirzapore. It should arrive within the day and we might get help by the morrow.
‘But we should not come in together in case they are looking out for us. You must walk with Mountstuart; I will come alone and find you.’
The town walls were tall and the colour of the dark red earth: a good start, I thought. But through the gates there were clusters of mean little huts, and as we walked further on it was evident the town had seen more prosperous times. Once grand houses had been overtaken by palm frond and vine, and there was little sense of trade and bustle. We pushed on towards the bazaar, hopeful but anxious. It was a sore disappointment: an all-but-abandoned square, a few sorry stalls and a tank where natives were watering their livestock. I brought the donkey to the tank to drink, and tried not to sink into despondency. I helped Mountstuart off the beast and settled him on the tank’s steps, for there was nowhere else I could put him. He did his best to appear able, but he was plainly not well, and my rather too successful attempts to help him dismount drew looks – though his ill health had the effect of discouraging our audience from examining us too closely. Taking care that my face was covered and my eyes shadowed by my hood, I looked about. There was very little to see. Someone was selling food in a corner; dogs sniffed rubbish. No sign of our pursuers at least, but none of Blake either. And so we sat by the tank, and I helped Mountstuart to water, and we waited. I wondered if I could find anyone to buy the donkey, but abandoned the notion as I had not the energy to pursue it.
At length I spotted Blake. He walked purposefully across the empty market, limping slightly, his hood deliberately obscuring his features. He hailed us in some dialect of Hindoostanee that I could not understand. He came to Mountstuart’s other side and muttered, ‘We must get him back on the donkey, we must move quickly.’ I did not need chivvying. We hurried as fast as we could across the square. Then, just to one side of us, a party of riders came into the market making for the tank – a European officer, and with him eight cavalry sepoys in Company livery. I felt such relief I could hardly breathe.
‘Thank God!’ I cried – but it came out an indistinct croak. ‘Thank God! Sir! You’ve saved us!’
The European turned round, looking for the provenance of the voice. I threw back my hood and pushed aside my veil, barely aware of the startled natives about me.
‘Who is that?’ The European turned, standing up in his saddle, obviously bemused, as were the ryots standing about. I was a most peculiar sight. He took off his helmet and looked over.
It was Hogwood.
‘Good heavens, Lieutenant Avery?’ Looking distinctly slight and small without his helmet, he pulled his horse around and rode up to us, squinting. ‘Lieutenant Avery! The hero of the hour! What on earth are you wearing?’
Our desperate need suffocated my confusion at seeing him. Many thoughts crowded into my mind but I thrust them away. ‘We have been walking for five days with almost no food. We are all out.’
‘You must be,’ he said, quite astonished. He took our party in. ‘Is that … Is that Mr Mountstuart? Great heavens!’ He dismounted.
Mountstuart raised his hand feebly, but did not speak.
‘Mr Mountstuart is not at all well. We rescued him from a band of Thugs – dacoits,’ I said.
‘Great heavens!’ Hogwood said again. ‘How absolutely extraordinary!’ He stared at the dirty creature on Mountstuart’s other side. ‘Mr Blake, is it you? I should never have known you.’
Blake nodded. ‘I heard there was a Company officer in the town.’
‘May I say again, Avery, that you look quite extraordinary.’
‘The Thugs – dacoits – trailed us for days. We were forced to adopt disguises.’
‘I see.’ Hogwood looked us over again, sounding more incredulous and as if he was on the verge of laughter, then suppressed it. ‘Dear me, I forget myself. What can I do for you – food and water to begin with, I imagine?’
