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‘He was already mobilising his troops—he must have been to get so close so fast. Then his spies told him that someone from the Company was here, perhaps that I intended to take you away, perhaps that I was negotiating. My guess is that he decided on a pre-emptive strike to seize the state before your uncle made an alliance with the Company.’
‘My uncle will not surrender to him!’ The floor was cold under her bare feet as she scrambled out of bed, the night air chill through the thin cotton of her shift.
‘No, he will stand firm. The raja has already despatched riders to his allies in Agra and Gwalior and to Delhi. The Company will send troops as soon as it receives the news and then I suspect Altaphur will back down without further fighting. Your uncle only has to withstand a siege for a matter of weeks.’
Was he attempting to soothe her with easy lies? Anusha tried to read his face in the gloom and control her churning stomach. ‘You will stay here and fight?’ Why one more soldier would make any difference, she did not know, but somehow the thought of this man at her uncle’s right shoulder made her feel better. He was arrogant, aggravating and foreign, but she had no doubt that Major Herriard was a warrior.
‘No. You and I are leaving. Now.’
‘I am not going to leave my uncle and run away! What do you take me for? A coward?’ His eyes flickered over her and she was suddenly aware of how thin her garment was, of how her nipples had peaked in the cool air. Anusha swept the bedcovers around her like a robe and glared at him as he got to his feet. ‘Lecher!’
‘I rather hoped I could take you for a sensible woman,’ he said with a sigh. He added something under his breath in English and she pounced on it.
‘What is this? A tutty-hooded female?’
‘Totty-headed. Foolish,’ he translated. ‘No, clawing my eyes out is not going to help.’ He caught her wrists with contemptuous ease. ‘Listen to me. Do you think it will help your uncle to have to worry about you on top of everything else? And if the worst happens, what are you going to do? Lead the women to the pyres or become a hostage?’
Anusha drew in a deep breath. He is right, may all the demons take him. She knew where her duty lay and she was not a child to refuse out of spite. She would go, not because this man told her to, but because her raja willed it. And because this was no longer her home. ‘No, if my uncle tells me to go, then I will go.
How?’
‘You can ride a horse?’
‘Of course I can ride a horse! I am a Rajput.’
‘Then dress for riding—hard riding. Dress as a man and wear tough cloth and good boots, wrap your hair in a turban. Bring a roll of blankets, the nights are cold outside, but only pack what you must have. Can you do that? I will meet you in the court below. Jaldi.’
‘I may be totty-headed, Major Herriard, but I am not a fool. And, yes, I understand the need to hurry.’
‘Can you dress without help?’ He paused on the threshold, a broad shadow against the pale marble.
Beyond words, Anusha threw a sandal at him and its ivory toe-post broke against the door jamb. He melted away into the darkness, leaving her shivering, the drumbeats vibrating through her very bones. For a moment she stood there, forcing herself to think clearly of what she must do, then she ran to the two maids. Under her groping fingers the blood beat strongly below their jawbones. Spies or not, they were alive.
She lifted the nightlight and took it round the room, touching it to the wicks of the lamps in every niche until there was enough light to see by. The mirrored fragments in the walls reflected her image in a myriad of jagged shards as she pulled out the last of the trunks, the one containing clothes for use on the journey. She dressed in plain trousers, tight in the calf, wide at the thigh, then layers above, topped by a long, dark brown split-sided coat. Her soft riding boots were there and she pulled them on, slid a dagger into the top of the right one and another, a tiny curved knife, into her belt.
It was quick to twist her hair into a tight plait to pile on the crown of her head and she wrapped and tied a turban out of dark brown cloth, fumbling as she did so. Sometimes she secured her hair like this when riding, but her maids had always tied it.
Money. How much money did Herriard have? Anusha pulled the long cloth free, rummaged in the trunk again and found the jewels she had intended to wear as they arrived in Calcutta, chosen to emphasise her status and her independence. She stuffed the finest into a bag, coiled her hair around it and rewrapped the turban.
Two blankets rolled around a change of linen, toilet articles, a bag containing hairpins and comb, tinder box. What else? She rubbed her temples—the drums stopped her thinking properly, invaded her head. Soon someone would come to check on her, fuss over her, shepherd her to the inner fastness of the palace where she really wanted to be. Where it was her duty not to go.
Anusha found her little box of medicines, added that, rolled up the blankets, tied them with leather straps and caught up the bundle in her arms. The walls were honeycombed with passages and stairs and she took one of the narrowest and least-used ways down, tiptoeing as she reached the doorway.
But Herriard had seen her. He stepped away from the wall, his eyes glinting in the reflected torchlight, and reached for the bundle.
‘I can manage. No, not that way, I must say goodbye to my uncle, to the Lady Paravi—’
‘And risk being seen? They know what we are doing and they have other things to think about just now. Come on.’ He pushed her in front of him through the door, back into the palace. He seemed to know the way as well as she, pulled her into alcoves as servants ran past, knew when to stop and slide into the shadows to avoid a distracted sentry, his attention on someone shouting on the battlements.
A slender figure stepped out right in front of them and she stopped so abruptly that Herriard ran into her and gripped both her arms above the elbow to steady himself. His body was hard and immovable against her back and his voice was a soft rumble. Suddenly she was glad of his size. When he released her it was as though a bulwark had been removed.
‘Ajit, are the horses ready?’
‘Yes, sahib,’ the man said and she recognised the major’s servant. He must have run up the steep road from the base court for he was panting. ‘Pavan and Rajat and a good mare for the lady. The lower gate is still open for soldiers taking up positions outside the walls, but we must hurry or we will be noticed.’
They ran, skidding on the black stones worn smooth by the passage of elephants and horses and men over hundreds of years, hugged the walls that loomed over them, slowed at every one of the gates where the road changed direction, all the better to confuse attackers if they got within the outer defences.
One more gate, Anusha thought, as she bounced painfully off a ring set in the wall. There was a cry ahead, a thud and Herriard stopped, bent over Ajit’s sprawled figure.
‘Collarbone, sahib,’ the man gasped. ‘Broken. I am sorry.’ He sat up and she saw his right shoulder sloped down at an unnatural angle. In the torchlight his face was grey.
‘You must stay.’ Herriard helped him to his feet and propped him up against the wall. ‘Go back up and see the court physician. He is to be trusted. Tell him to let his Highness know we are safe away.’
‘Sahib, take my bundle, too—there are weapons.’
‘I will. You take care, Ajit, my friend, I will see you in Calcutta.’
Herriard picked up the fallen bundle, took Anusha’s arm and dragged her on. ‘How good a rider are you?’ he demanded as they slowed for the final gate before the lower court. He stopped, watchful, the shadows of the vicious spikes set at the height of an elephant’s forehead lying in bars across his face.
‘Excellent. Of course.’ She looked up at the rows of handprints at the side of the gate, left by the women who had gone through it to become sati on their husbands’ funeral pyres. She shuddered and the Englishman felt it and followed her gaze.
‘Another good reason for not marrying a maharaja twice your age,’ he observed as he took her elbow and steered her into the courtyard.
‘Do not touch me!’
He ignored her until they were past the bustle of the elephant lines and into the straw-strewn stables, virtually empty now the cavalry had ridden out. Then he stopped, jerking her against him. He would say it was so he could keep his voice low, but she knew it was a show of dominance.
‘Listen to me, Miss Laurens. Hard as it may be for you to believe, your beauty does not inflame me with lust and, even if it did, I am not fool enough to waste time dallying with you when a small war is about to break out around our heads.’
He released her and began to strap the blanket rolls behind the saddles of the three horses that still stood in the stalls: a handsome, raking grey, a smaller, well-muscled black and a bay with the brand of her uncle’s stud. ‘Take this.’ He thrust the bay’s reins into her hand. ‘When I need to touch you, I will touch you, and when I do you had better be prepared to obey me because it will be an emergency. I promised your father I would get you back to him, but I did not promise him not to tan your backside in the process.’
‘You … swine,’ Anusha hissed.
Herriard shrugged. ‘If I am, then I am the swine who is going to keep you alive. And, while we are on the subject of touching, I should point out that you are the one who sneaked into the bathhouse and touched me when I was naked. Your hands were cold and your technique could do with some work.’ He led out the other two horses and tied the black’s reins on its neck—the blanket rolls were strapped to its back. ‘Here, I’ll give you a leg up.’
‘I do not need your help.’ Anusha jammed her foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. ‘And I only wanted to see—’ She shut her mouth in confusion at where her temper had led her.
‘See what?’ He was up on the grey now. In the torchlight his lean features showed nothing but amused curiosity.
‘What colour you were,’ Anusha snapped.
‘And your curiosity was satisfied?’ Herriard clicked his tongue and the grey and the black moved out into the yard. Anusha dug in her heels and sent her horse after them.
‘Yes. Where you are not touched by the sun you are pink. Not white at all.’ She would not be shamed or embarrassed by him.
‘I suspect that after many days with you I will be turning white on a regular basis,’ he said. ‘Now, be quiet and cover yourself.’ He pulled the tail of his turban round and tucked it in to veil the lower part of his face. Seething, Anusha followed his example and the three horses passed out of the main gate and down the road towards the town without challenge.
She twisted in the saddle for a last look at the great walls towering above her, the fort that contained a palace, the palace that had been her home. Now she was simply a fugitive, neither Anusha, the raja’s pampered niece, nor Miss Laurens, the rejected daughter of an Englishman. The thought was frightening and strangely liberating. She did not have to think about where she was going or how she would get there—for days she would be floating on the stream of fate.
At the pressure of her heels the bay drew alongside Herriard’s big grey. ‘Where do we go?’ she asked in English. She had best practise it, she supposed.
‘Allahabad to start with. Speak Hindi.’
‘So we do not attract attention?’ Anusha tucked the end of the cloth more snugly into the turban as he nodded. ‘You do that without a word spoken. You are too big and too pale.’ She would die rather than admit that she found the sheer size of him comforting.
‘With my hair covered I can be taken for a Pathan,’ Herriard said.
‘They are tall and light-skinned and they have grey eyes, some of the men from the north, I have seen them,’ she agreed. ‘But your eyes are green.’
The town was seething like a disturbed ant heap with the news of the maharaja’s approaching army. The bay snorted and sidled at the press of bullock carts, the running figures and the trains of camels. Herriard reached for her rein, then withdrew his hand when she hissed at him. She had her mount back under control within seconds.
‘I am flattered that you noticed my eyes.’ He skirted round a cow that lay in the middle of the road chewing the cud as it ignored all around it with complete indifference.
‘You should not be. Of course I noticed—you are different. Strange,’ she added to make certain he did not think it a compliment. ‘It is a long time since I saw someone like you.’
He did not answer her, but guided his horse around a spitting, grumbling knot of camels and out over the rickety bridge that spanned the river. So, he was either not easy to goad or he simply dismissed her as unimportant. The moon was up, noticeable now they were away from the torches and the fires, and the angrezi stood in his stirrups to survey the road in front of them.
‘We can take that track there.’ Anusha pointed. ‘It cuts through the fields and it will be deserted now. We will make better time and no one will see us.’
‘And we will leave the tracks of three horses plain on soil that is trodden only by bare feet and oxen. Here, on the road, we will be less easy to track.’
At least he explains, Anusha conceded, then the implication hit home. ‘We will be followed?’
‘Of course. Once it is realised that you are no longer in the palace the maharaja’s spies will pass the word out. I am counting on half a day’s start, that is all.’
Anusha’s stomach tightened. Suddenly the Englishman’s frankness was no longer so welcome. ‘It is more dangerous out here than in the fort. Why did we not stay there until help came?’
He shot her a glance, the silvery light catching his eyes, making them unreal, like the greenish pearl of the inside of a shell. ‘Because your uncle could not be certain that he could protect you within the palace. Your father makes you a very tempting prize for a man who wishes for nothing but his own power and to keep the Company at bay.’
‘I was in danger within the palace?’
‘I think so. I removed you easily enough, did I not?’
‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. Treachery, spies, danger, lies. And she had thought her life had been so tranquil, so … boring. I could have been kidnapped at any time.
‘Frightened?’
‘Of what?’ she demanded. ‘There is much to choose from.’
That surprised a laugh from him. ‘Of the pursuers, of the journey, of where you are going. Of me.’
‘No,’ Anusha lied. She was afraid of all of those things, but she was not going to admit it. His faint snort of derision showed what he thought of that.
‘You appear to be competent, so I imagine you will evade pursuit,’ she said. It seemed important to convince him of her courage, her ability to undertake this journey. ‘I look forward to being able to look around me, to see things openly and not through the screens of a travelling palanquin. I will deal with my destination when I get there. And as for you, Major Herriard, you are a—’ She searched for the equivalent in Hindi and resorted to English. ‘Gentleman, are you not, if you are an officer? And my mother said that English gentlemen must behave honourably to ladies.’
‘That is the theory,’ he agreed, his voice dry. And then he laughed and spurred his horse into a canter, leaving her to follow, her body tight with apprehension.
Chapter Four
‘Why are we stopping?’ Anusha demanded. The horses had dropped into a trot and then a walk as Major Herriard turned off the road. Beneath their hooves the ground was stony and uneven. ‘This is a terrible surface, we cannot canter on this.’
‘Are you going to question every decision I make?’ he asked without turning his head.
‘Yes.’ Now she did not have to concentrate on keeping her aching body in the saddle the desire to slide off and simply go to sleep was overwhelming. Perhaps when she woke it would all have been a bad dream.
‘The moon will be down very soon and then it will be hard to see where we are going. There are trees over there, cover. We will make a temporary camp and sleep until sunrise. I turned off here because the ground will not show tracks.’
‘Very well,’ Anusha agreed.
‘That is very gracious of you, Miss Laurens, but your approval is not required, merely your obedience.’ Herriard was a dark shape now as he sat motionless on the horse and studied the small group of trees and thorn bushes in what was left of the moonlight. He spoke absently, as though she was peripheral to his interest.
‘Major Herriard!’
‘Call me Nick. Stay here. Your voice has probably scared off anything dangerous lurking in there, but I will check first.’
Nick. What sort of name was that? She translated to take her mind off the fact that she was suddenly alone and things were rustling in the bushes. Quite large things. Was nick not something to do with a small cut? Well, that hardly suited him—the man had the subtlety and brutal force of a sabre slash.
‘There is a small shrine in there, a stone platform we can sleep on and some firewood. We can light a fire and it will be shielded by the walls,’ he said as he rode back to her side. ‘There are water jars for the horses, which is good fortune.’
‘You would plunder a shrine?’ Anusha demanded, more out of antagonism than outrage as she guided her horse after him. Taking water was hardly plunder.
‘We will do no damage. We can leave an offering if you wish.’ He swung down as he spoke and came to hold up a hand to her.
‘I can manage. And what is a Christian doing leaving an offering at a Hindu shrine?’ Her feet hit the ground rather harder than she had been expecting and her knees buckled. Nick’s hand under her elbow was infuriatingly necessary. ‘I said I can manage.’
He ignored her and held on until she had her balance. It felt very strange to be touched by a man, a virtual stranger. It felt safe and dangerous all at the same time. ‘It would cause no offence, I imagine. And after twelve years in this country I am not at all sure what I am. A pragmatist, perhaps. What are you?’
It was a good question. She supposed she had better decide before she reached Calcutta. Her mother had converted to Christianity after she had lived with Sir George for five years. For ten years Anusha had gone with her to church. And in Kalatwah she had lived as a Hindu. ‘What am I? I do not know. Does it matter, so long as one lives a good life?’
‘A sound philosophy. At least that is something we do not have to fight over.’ He did not unsaddle the horses but loosened the girths and then dumped their kit on the stone platform.
‘We do not have to fight at all, provided you treat me with respect,’ Anusha retorted. And stop watching me like a hawk. She found a twiggy branch and began to sweep an area clear of the leaf litter that might harbour insects or a small snake.
‘I will treat you with the respect that you earn, Miss Laurens.’ Herriard … Nick … hefted an urn over to the stone trough by the horses and poured out water. ‘You are a woman and your father’s daughter, which means I do not deal with you as I would a man. After that—’ he shrugged ‘—it is up to you.’
‘I do not wish to go to my father. I hate my father.’
‘You may wish what you will and you may think what you wish, but you will not abuse Sir George in my hearing. And you will obey me. Stay there.’ In the semi-darkness she could not read his face, but Anusha heard the anger. Again he showed that fierce, puzzling, loyalty to her father. He turned and walked away.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’ Surely he was not going to punish her by leaving her here in the dark?
Nick vanished into the scrub and she heard what sounded like boots kicking at the low branches. When he walked back he was doing something to the front of his trousers and she blushed in the gloom. ‘There is a nice thick bush there,’ he said, gesturing. ‘With no snakes.’
‘Thank you.’ With as much dignity as she could muster Anusha stalked down the three steps to the ground and over to the bush. The mundane implications of being alone like this with a man were beginning to dawn on her. There might be vast areas with hardly a bush. How was she supposed to manage then? The wretch seemed to have no shyness, no modesty about mentioning these things at all. Never, in the ten years until she had chased Tavi and found herself in that corridor with Nick, had she been all alone with a man, even her uncle or one of the eunuchs.
When she emerged his attention was, mercifully, on lighting a small fire in an angle of the wall. The flames made a pool of light on the platform, but would be hidden from anyone approaching from the direction they had come. A bed of blankets had been made up close to the fire.
In the shadows she could see the stumpy pillar of the Shiva lingam and the firelight glinted for a moment on something that trickled down its side. ‘People have been here recently.’ She went and looked at the pool of fresh oil on the head of the ancient stone phallus, the spray of flowering shrub that had been laid on the curve of the stylised female organ that it rose from.
‘I have,’ Herriard said as she joined her hands together in a brief reverence. It seemed that, whatever his beliefs, he knew how to show respect to the gods, if not to her. More in charity with him, she turned back and he gestured to food laid out on a large leaf beside the blankets. ‘Here. Eat and drink and then rest. Do not take anything off, not even your boots.’
‘I have no intention of removing anything!’
‘Then you are going to have a very uncomfortable few weeks, Miss Laurens. Oh, sit down, I am far too weary to ravish you tonight!’
That was a jest. She hoped. Warily Anusha sank down on to the blankets. ‘Eat and keep your strength up. Now we can only rest for a short while. Tomorrow night I hope we may take longer.’
‘Where are you going to sleep?’ She took a piece of naan, folded it around what looked like goat’s cheese and ate, surprised at how hungry she was.
‘I will not sleep. I will keep watch.’
‘You cannot do that every night,’ she pointed out.
‘No,’ Nick agreed. ‘I will rest when it is safer and where you can keep watch.’ He tore off a piece of the flat bread and ate it. She caught a glimpse of strong white teeth.
‘Me?’
‘Look around you, Miss Laurens. Who else is there? Sooner or later I must sleep. Or are you not capable of acting as a look-out?’
‘Of course. I am capable of anything. I am a—’
‘Rajput, I know. You are also your father’s daughter, which should mean that there is a brain in there somewhere, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
Anusha choked on a mouthful of water from the flask. ‘How dare you! You are used to this sort of thing, I am not. I have been dragged from my bed, forced to ride through the night with a man—I have never been alone with a man for ten years—I am worried about Kalatwah …’
‘True,’ Nick conceded. It was not much of an apology. ‘I will do my best to preserve your privacy and your modesty, but you must behave as much like a man as you can, for your own safety. Do you understand that?’
‘As you guessed, I do have a brain,’ she retorted. ‘Now I am going to sleep.’
‘Namaste,’ he said, so politely that he must be mocking her.
‘Namaste,’ she returned as she rolled herself into the blankets. She would just close her eyes, rest her aching body. But she would not sleep—she did not trust him.
Anusha woke, suddenly and completely alert, with that thought still in her mind. She had been foolish to fear, it seemed. Her rest had been undisturbed, her blankets were still tight around her. Herriard was moving about, attending to the horses.