Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1981

Copyright © Jon Cleary 1981

Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint extracts from:

Woman Correspondent by Bridget O’Brady Farnol

(New York, 1966: William Morrow and Co. Inc.)

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006167112

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007569007

Version: 2015-06-01

Dedication

For Alberto and Jorge

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE
1

It was a beautifully clear day for an ambush. Clive Farnol was working his way up from the Satluj River towards the Tibet Road, climbing a steep rocky ridge, when it happened. The first bullet hit one of the four Paharee porters, tumbling him backwards down the slope, and the next three shots sent chips flying from a rock right beside Farnol.

He heard Karim Singh swear and the three surviving porters cry out in fear. Then he swore himself as another bullet whined away off the rock only inches from his face, flicking grit into his face. He tried to roll himself into a ball behind the rock, no easy task for a man as tall as himself, and squinted over his shoulder at Karim. The Sikh was equally tall and he looked awkward and embarrassed as he tried to make himself as small a target as possible. The three porters, all small men, were already sliding back down the ridge, their packs abandoned, their swiftly retreating backs declaring neutrality.

‘Coward buggers,’ said Karim, spitting down the ridge.

Farnol felt he couldn’t blame the porters; it wasn’t in their contract that they should die for five annas a day. The shooting had stopped, but he knew that it was not finished. The ambushers, whoever they were, were probably working their way to better positions to pick off him and Karim. But who were they? Why had they chosen to shoot at this small party of travellers? He and Karim were both in hillmen’s dress: baggy breeches, faded shirts, goatskin vests and turbans. True, they both carried Lee-Enfield rifles, but the chances were that the rifles firing on them were also Lee-Enfields; stolen British Army weapons were a mark of honour amongst the hillmen, a sort of self-conferred, lethal Order of the Indian Empire. But why waste bullets on what, from a distance, would have looked like nothing more than a small party of villagers moving down from the high mountains to Simla? Any ordinary band of dacoits would have waited till the party had climbed up to the road, then set on them, cut their throats with kris and taken what loot they wanted from the packs carried by the porters. And, of course, taken the two rifles.

Farnol suddenly rose up, scrambled up the hill and fell into a depression behind a larger rock; bullets chased him but missed. Karim remained where he was, now lying flat on his back behind a thin spine of rock; he had worked out that the shots were all coming from one direction, a ridge above them and to their left. He was an old hand at ambushes, having seen them from both sides.

Farnol looked around him. In the far distance, whence they had come, he could see the Eternal Snows, the last barrier of the Himalayas; the morning sky was absolutely cloudless and the mountains had the sharp-edged look of white glass. Nearer, the hills fell away as steep ridges, some of them patterned with the corduroy of terraces; he could see the tiny figures of peasants tilling the rocky ground, sowing the wheat that would turn the terraces into bright strips of green in late March. On a ridge up near the road a man and a woman were digging stones and rocks from a new terrace and carting them up to the roadway where they would be used as fill: the ridges were harvested for everything that would bring in a few annas. Still nearer, on a ridge across a deep ravine, Farnol could see a goat-herd and his herd moving, like a small cloud-shadow, up towards the road. The goat-herd had stopped and was looking Farnol’s way, a disinterested spectator of the ambush: he looked at the distance as if 1 e were as unconcerned as his goats.

A flash of movement tugged at Farnol’s eye: a man ran down from the road to an outcrop of rock high to the left. Farnol turned his head and looked at the ridge on his right. A thick cloak of silver fir that ran up its spine was broken for a few yards by a gully, then continued across to cover the top of the ridge on which he lay.

‘I’m going up to the road, Karim.’

‘If you say so, sahib.’ Karim Singh was that rarity, a cautious Sikh who always weighed discretion against valour; he was no coward but he always thought twice before attempting to be a hero. He would deride others for their instant cowardice, as he just had the porters, but they were Paharees and, being a Sikh, he could not think of them with anything but derision.

‘When I reach there, you follow me.’

‘If you say so, sahib. But wouldn’t it be better to wait till nightfall?’

‘Karim, that won’t be for another eight hours!’ Then Farnol sighed. ‘I don’t know why I bother to keep you with me.’

‘You have become accustomed to me, sahib.’

True, Farnol thought. A man’s loyalty was worth more than his bravery. But he wished he had been fortunate enough to have found a legendary Sikh, one of those black-bearded heroes whom Rudyard Kipling was always writing about. Mr Kipling should be here now . . . Another shot rang out, the bullet whining away once more off the rock above Farnol.

‘I want you up there on the road five minutes after I get there. Five minutes, less if you can make it. Understand?’

He didn’t wait for Karim’s usual answer – ‘If you say so, sahib’ – but all at once rose up and flung himself down the side slope of the ridge. He heard another bullet ricochet away above him, but he kept hurtling down the slope, a tall two-legged mountain goat that, like its four-legged brethren, managed by some miracle to stay on its feet. He reached the bottom of a gully, crossed it and scrambled up to the protecting shadows of the firs. He kept moving, his lungs beginning to ache through moving so quickly in the thin air. Then something hit him and he fell sideways into a tree, all the air going out of him in a great painful gasp. For an instant he wondered why it had not occurred to him that there might be more ambushers here amongst the trees.

Then he saw the big sambhar stag go plunging down through the trees, its head twisting as its antlers struck a tree-trunk, its panic evident in the reckless way it skidded and slid and jumped down the steep slope. Farnol stood up, felt for broken bones, decided there was none and moved on, stiffly now, up through the trees. He had been shooting sambhar for ten years, but he had never been closer than a hundred yards to them. It would be something to tell in the mess, if ever he got back to the mess, that he had been knocked down by a stag as big as a small elephant. Or so it had seemed.

He worked his way up the ridge, stopping only once, to catch his breath and to check he had a full magazine in his rifle. He wore a bandolier of ammunition, but he did not want to get into a protracted battle with the ambushers. He had no idea how many were in the band of dacoits, but he guessed there were no more than three or four.

He came to the edge of the trees, and saw the road running slightly downhill to his left. That meant, with luck, he should be above the enemy, a golden rule amongst hillmen. He had been born in these hills; he had been sent to England, to Wellington and Sandhurst, to be educated; his real education, that needed for survival here, had been bred into him at birth. Four generations of Farnols had fought in India and three of them had been born here; there were instincts inherent in him that still prevailed under the varnish that the years in England had applied. He understood as well as anyone that the tribesmen of these hills, from Afghanistan as far east as Nagaland, knew as much about fighting as any graduate of Sandhurst, probably a great deal more.

He crossed the road at a run, made it to the forest of firs that continued up the slope. He moved swiftly, his experience showing in the way he made use of his cover: like Karim Singh, he was a veteran of ambushes. But on those other occasions he had half-expected them, had known the reason for them.

He came to the spot where, on the opposite side of the road, there was a cairn of stones with a pole of prayer-flags fluttering above it. Pious travellers had built the cairn over the years, each adding a stone to it as he passed; Farnol offered his own prayer of thanks to the religious who had built such a fine redoubt for him. He ran across the road again, took cover behind the big pile of stones and looked down the slope below him. Above him the prayer-flags fluttered like live birds tied by their feet to the pole.

He saw the three men, each crouched behind his own rock, all three of them armed with long-barrelled rifles; he had been wrong about their having Lee-Enfields and he wondered what sort of guns they were. He looked around for a fourth man, one who should have been left up here on the higher ground as a look-out; but he could see no one. These men below him were either amateurs, new to the ambush game, or they were drugged with hashish, had thrown caution to the mountain wind in the excitement of killing. So far, however, they were not excited or crazed enough to stand up and charge down on where Karim still lay behind his low rock.

Farnol took aim. The men were less than a hundred yards below him, easy targets. He felt no compunction about killing in cold blood; he had learned long ago that one didn’t survive if one waited to be hot-blooded about it. Killing was not like making love: one did not work up to it.

He squeezed the trigger, saw one of the men slump down as if all his bones had suddenly melted. He jerked back the bolt, ejected the cartridge, slammed the bolt home again, took aim, fired. A second man, spinning round to face up the slope, stood as if he had been pulled up by a rope, then fell backwards over the rim of a ledge. Farnol aimed the Lee-Enfield a third time, but the third man had slid down below the rock in front of him, got a shot off up the slope as Farnol switched his aim.

Farnol knew at once that he was not going to be able to draw a bead on the man in his new position. He hesitated, scanning the slope; above him the prayer-flags cracked in the rising wind. On the next ridge the goat-herd still stood looking at this duel that was no business of his; Farnol silently cursed him for his disinterest. He was like the bloody villagers who stood on the sidelines of the polo matches down on the plains, careless of who won or lost, showing approval only if one of the players toppled from his pony and broke his leg or neck. That was India: four hundred million bystanders.

He straightened up, sped down the slope, slipping and sliding, heading for a large rock that would give him all the shelter he would need. Then, while he was in full flight, going too fast to drop down, he saw the man rise up, his rifle at his shoulder. Farnol knew he was going to die. A hillman like this one would have spent his life aiming at moving targets: sambhar, gooral sheep, pheasants and men. But the enemy bullet, if it was fired at all, came nowhere near Farnol. As he hit the ground, hurling himself forward to slide down towards the big rock, he caught a lopsided glimpse of the rifleman falling forward, losing his rifle as he did so.

Farnol lay a moment, getting his breath, waiting for the man to reach for his rifle. But he lay still, one arm flung out towards the gun. Farnol got to his feet, aching from the crash of his body against the rocky ground, gravel rash scorching him like sunburn, blood running from a cut above his eye. Moving cautiously, rifle at the ready, he went down towards the hillman. He saw Karim standing up on the next ridge, but he made no sign towards the Sikh; there would be time later to thank Karim for the shot that had saved his life. He paused about ten feet from the ambusher, tensed as the man’s arm quivered, trying to grab the rifle just beyond the reach of the weakly clawing hand. Then he moved down, put his foot on the rifle. He recognized it: a Krenk, a very old one, a Russian weapon.

He looked down at the dying man, said in Hindi, ‘Why did you try to kill me?’

The man stared up at him out of fierce eyes that were already glazing with death. The rattle was in his throat as he whispered, ‘Raj – will die!’

2

Karim Singh came scrambling across from the other ridge. ‘Sahib, that was a damned close thing! If it were not for my marvellous accuracy, you would be dead!’

‘I am grateful for your marvellous accuracy.’ One could hardly tick off a man for his conceit, not when he’d just saved your life. ‘Take a look at the other two.’

Karim went across to inspect the other two hillmen, came back to report they were both dead. ‘You too, sahib, are marvellously accurate. But haven’t I always said so? Such marvellous shots, we are. Our skill leaves me speechless!’

Farnol, deaf to the speechless Karim, was examining the dead man. He pulled his turban down over the cut above his eye and for a moment the flow of blood was staunched. He still felt sore and stiff from his plunge down the slope, but his mind was alert with questions. He went through the man’s pockets, but there was nothing in them to identify him. Some dried apricots, a string of prayer-beads: the sustenance of the traveller in these hills. Farnol himself carried apricots in his pocket, but he had never felt the need of prayer-beads.

He lifted the man’s arm to lay it by his side; he was a neat man who liked to see even the dead laid out neatly. The ragged sleeve fell back and he saw the marking on the inside of the arm at the bend of the elbow. It was smudged, not a very good tattoo; it looked like a dagger standing in the middle of a jagged circle. He stood up, went down to the other bodies, looked at the right arms: the same marking was there just inside the elbow. One of the tattoos was clearer than the others and he recognized it now for what it was meant to be: a dagger driven into the centre of a crown.

He got slowly to his feet, not wanting to believe the thought crystallizing in his mind. Raj – will die! He had taken it as a threat against himself, taking it for granted that the ambushers had somehow known who he was: a political agent, a representative of the British Raj. But the man had meant someone much higher than himself, someone for whom he had no other name but Raj. The word could mean kingdom, a ruler or a great ruler.

Or The Great Ruler: George the Fifth, King of England, already down in Bombay and on his way to Delhi where he was to be crowned Emperor of India.

3

‘You must remember, Major Farnol, you cannot rule this part of the world forever.’

‘We have no intention ever of trying to rule Tibet.’ The lama had given himself no name and Farnol knew better than to ask. He knew the etiquette and protocol of these mountains as well as he did those of the messes, the stations and the government offices down on the plains; he took care to respect these customs more than he did those of his own kind. ‘Other people covet your country more than we do.’

He was not convinced that what he said was true. Eight years ago Francis Younghusband had led a British expedition up through the passes east of Lue and on to Lhasa; Curzon, the then Viceroy, had dreamed of Britain ruling the Roof of the World as well as the Indian sub-continent. The British influence had declined after Younghusband and Curzon both retired from the imperial service, but Farnol knew there were still men in India and Whitehall who dreamed of enlarging the Empire.

‘I am not concerned for my country.’ The lama was no more than skin and bone, a shrivelled gourd for the inner peace that kept him alive. Unafraid of death, he waited patiently for its arrival like a passenger at a wayside station waiting for a train that ran to no schedule. ‘I speak of India. Time is running out for the English.’

‘Perhaps. But it won’t run out in my lifetime.’ But there were doubts nibbling like mice at all he had been brought up to believe in. ‘Not even if I live to your great and honourable age.’

The lama’s withered gums did not make an attractive smile; the warm humour was in the faded eyes peering out from its veil of wrinkles. ‘I hope you live so long, Major Farnol. But I warn you – there are men in the hills south of here who are plotting to drive the English out of India.’

‘Where can I find them?’

But the lama waved a vague hand; it looked to Farnol like a floating leaf. They were seated cross-legged on the terrace that ran along below the southern wall of the monastery; there was no fence to the edge of the terrace and below them there was a cliff that fell sheer for at least two thousand feet. Across the deep valley, an arm’s length away on the thin shining air, was the lowest range of the Eternal Snows; Farnol would have to cross it on his way back into India. He had crossed the frontier marked by the cartographers, but it was not marked on the mountains and he knew he would never be asked for a visa.

‘Somewhere. Who knows?’ The mountains were gods to the people who lived amongst them and the lama would not betray the plotters the gods had chosen to hide. Such a betrayal would need a sign from the gods themselves.

Farnol bit into one of the small Lachen apples that one of the younger monks had brought him and the lama. He had also brought some small barley cakes, an urn of tea and a bowl of yak butter. Farnol had already eaten one of the cakes and taken a sip of the buttered tea; but in all his time in these mountains he had never learned to like the taste of either. The Lachen apple, tart as the small Christmas apples he had once eaten in England, cleansed his mouth.

‘Should I fear for my own life going back through the mountains?’

The lama’s bones creaked with his shrug; the eighty-one beads of his rosary click-clicked their way between the dry twigs of his fingers. ‘Are you afraid of death?’

‘Yes.’ When you are thirty-two years did, your health is good and your prostate gland is something you don’t know you possess, why should one be unafraid of death?

The lama’s smile was all gums and wrinkles. ‘You should spend more time here with us.’

At the far corner of the terrace where it turned round the monastery wall, a man was seated facing north and east. Farnol guessed the direction of his gaze, towards Kailas, the holiest of all the holy mountains. It was there amidst the Eternal Snows, lying not only in heaven and earth but in the hearts of believers. Farnol could imagine the meditation of the unmoving man at the far end of the terrace, the trancelike contemplation which could make him part of the mountains and the mountains part of him, one with the gods. He himself had always felt the mysticism of these high places, but scepticism had always denied him the transcendental feeling that the true believer could achieve.

The lama saw Farnol looking at the man. ‘A seeker after the truth – he comes from the south. He is not one of us but he seeks the same truth.’

‘Do many come here from the outside?’

‘Not many, but some. We always make them welcome. We should make you welcome if you wished to stay.’

‘I must leave for Simla tomorrow.’ He smiled. ‘But not to seek the truth, not there.’ Not amongst the little tin gods.

‘As a young man I worked as a bearer in Simla. Are you Church of England?’

‘Occasionally.’ At Christmas, Easter and on compulsory church parades back at the regiment.

‘The Church of England doesn’t understand contemplation.’ He remembered the vicar’s wife for whom he had worked, who had always tried to tell him that cleanliness was next to godliness. He now hadn’t had a bath in sixty years and he was sure he was as close to God as any shiny-skinned Christian. ‘But then neither does the Englishman, does he? I watched him in Simla. When he was not working he was playing polo or that strange game, cricket –’

‘There’s time for contemplation there. The spectators often go into trances.’

But the lama, a wise man but unlearned in the wisdom of the west, missed the joke. Or perhaps, Farnol thought, the English sense of humour doesn’t translate well into Tibetan. He spoke five languages besides English, but humour was always the note that slipped on the tongue.

‘Take care, Major Farnol. Do not spend so much time on the playing fields. I hear whispers –’ Again the leaf of his hand floated in the air. ‘The caravans coming back bring us rumours of men in certain villages who will soon be going south to start their work.’

‘Tibetans or Indians?’ Farnol saw the lama’s hesitation and pressed the question: ‘You can tell me without offending the gods. You don’t want our soldiers coming so far north to seek them out, not again.’

‘All I can say is that they are not our people,’ said the lama and Farnol knew he would tell only the truth. ‘They are Indian. But I can tell you no more than that. The gods will tell you if they wish to.’

The man at the end of the terrace stood up. Farnol, his attention distracted for a moment from the lama, watched fascinated as the mystic, wrapped in a long brown robe, seemed to move in a trance towards the very edge of the terrace, as if he were going to step out on to the clear shining air. Farnol stopped himself from crying out; he knew better than to interfere. He knew how some of these men could put themselves into a state where they achieved the seemingly impossible: to walk through fire and come out unharmed, to sit naked amongst the ice of the highest places and be unaffected. But men did not walk on the air above a valley two thousand feet deep. Christ may have walked on the water but even He had never shown that He could walk on air.

The man abruptly stopped; Farnol guessed that his toes must be curled over the very edge of the tremendous drop. He stood there poised, unmoving, seemingly leaning on the breeze that blew up from the valley; Farnol waited for him to plunge off into the void. Then he turned round; Farnol would swear that for a moment the man actually stepped off the terrace edge, stood on the air. Then he walked back across the terrace, gliding in the long brown robe. As he disappeared past the corner of the monastery wall he looked towards Farnol and the lama. Farnol caught a glimpse of a black beard, a hooked nose and dark deep-set eyes that he was sure saw neither himself nor the lama.

‘Were the gods protecting that man when he stood there on the edge?’

‘Who knows? We can only put our trust in them. You should put your trust in them, too.’

‘I only wish I could.’ But that was not the truth: he had the sceptic’s false faith in himself.

All that had been a month ago and since then, journeying slowly back through the high passes, working the villages for information like an insurance salesman looking for new clients, he had learned nothing from the gods or any less exalted source. He had heard a rumour or two, but they had been only echoes; nobody knew, or would tell, where the gossip had begun. Once, in a village, a man had pointed a finger, but when Farnol had looked round the man the finger had been pointed at had disappeared; when he turned back the would-be informer had also disappeared. It had always been like that here in the Himalayas: mystery and magic were part of the atmosphere, conjurers, mesmerists and the occasional charlatan were as native to the mountains as the gooral sheep and the snow leopard. The only defence was never to show your bewilderment.

So he had slowly come down from the high places till he found himself on the Tibet Road above the Satluj River and there been ambushed.

He and Karim buried the three ambushers and the dead porter under cairns of stones, mindful that they would wish their own bodies to be treated that way, safe from the jaws of jackals. Then Karim had shouted at the top of his large voice, a trumpet call for the cowardly, despicable, thieving porter-buggers to come back up the ridge and pick up their packs. The porters, who had not yet been paid, a shrewd yoke that generally kept them from running too far, came back, suffered a lash or two from Karim’s lathi cane, picked up their loads and fell in behind Farnol and Karim. That night and the next Farnol and Karim took turns in keeping guard when they camped, but nobody had appeared to disturb or attack them. Yet Farnol had felt every step back along the Road, through Narkanda, Theog and Fagu, that he was being watched. But whenever he looked back, no matter how quickly, he saw no one.

On the third day after the ambush, in the late afternoon, Farnol walked into Simla. Smoke came up the steep slopes of the narrow ridge on which the town seemed to be plastered rather than built. Down in the bazaar and in the houses where the native population lived on the south side of the ridge, cooking fires had been lit and the smoke rose like an evening mist, drifting into the rear of the Europeans’ bungalows built on the upper roads. Maids came hurrying to close the windows, shouting abuse down at the lower life who dared cause this inconvenience. The lower life replied with abuse as thick and pungent as the smoke. It was an evening ritual that each level would miss if ever it were discontinued.

Farnol walked along the road just below the Mall. Indians were not allowed to walk on the Mall, the road that ran along the top of the ridge; that hand-swept, spotless roadway was reserved strictly for Europeans and the Indian nobles. Even they, too, were restricted in that they could not ride in a carriage or motor car; that privilege was reserved for the Viceroy, who, when in residence at the Lodge, would drive the length of the ridge every Sunday morning to church while lesser souls tested their faith with their feet or rode amongst the fleas in a rickshaw.

Farnol, still dressed as a hillman, did not want any run-in with the police till he reached the Viceregal Lodge. Several of the better-class Indians, out for their evening promenade, necks held stiff in their Celluloid collars, looked contemptuously at him, Karim and the three porters; but there was something about the bearing of the tall bearded hillman that stopped them from telling him to get down to one of the even lower roads. Farnol smiled to himself, knowing their thoughts: there was no one more jealous of his station than the Indian who worked for the Indian Civil Service. But then there was no one more class conscious than the English Brahmins of the ICS.

‘Snob buggers,’ said Karim Singh, who had his own contempt for office wallahs. ‘When do we go down to Delhi, sahib?’

‘Tomorrow, perhaps the day after. It will depend on Colonel Lathrop.’

A lot would depend on George Lathrop. It was he who had recruited Farnol from Farnol’s Horse and, three years ago, sent him into the North-West Frontier as a political agent. Since then there had been other excursions, all of them dangerous, not all of them rewarding; Farnol, a man ambitious for a certain degree of comfort, had had moments when he had wondered why he agreed to work for Lathrop. He had been born in India of a family that had first come here in 1750 to work for the East India Company; his great-great-grandfather had formed Farnol’s Horse, a Company regiment, in 1776 and the eldest son or only son of each succeeding generation had been expected to join the regiment. After his education in England Clive had returned to join the Horse, to find his place in the circumscribed life that was the way of the Indian Army. Even if all the blood in him was English, he had been infected by Indian ways: he saw the sybaritic life that the princes lived and he had longed for the opportunity to fall prey to such corruption. He had slept with the daughters of princes and with the wives of several; had he been caught his pure English blood would have run very freely out of his slit throat and down his dress uniform, for princes had a proper sense of occasion even for executions and would not have allowed him to die in regimental undress. But his success with the ladies, by their being clandestine, had not led to any invitations to join the luxury life in the palaces. In the end, bored by life in the regiment, he had instead accepted Lathrop’s invitation to be seconded to the Political Service. He had also come to realize that if some prince did offer his daughter in marriage, he would probably back out. He was the sort of man who wished to be corrupted only at a distance or, if closer, then only occasionally.

Three months ago, at the beginning of September, Lathrop had sent him up the Tibet Road to the mythical frontier only believed in by statesmen and cartographers. The word had gone out earlier in the year that on the 12th day of December in this year of grace 1911, George the Fifth of Great Britain and his consort Queen Mary were coming to Delhi to be crowned, at a Great Durbar, Emperor and Empress of India. Farnol had been instructed to find out if the hill tribes were excited by the news, troubled by it or if, indeed, they cared at all. The general attitude, he had found, had been one of bemused puzzlement: King Who? In a region so remote that some villages did not know the name of the headman of the next village fifty miles away on the other side of a mountain, there was little cause for the clapping of hands and shouts of Hats off, the King! when someone produced a piece of paper and read to them the news that a Great Raj from over Le sea (‘What is a sea, sahib?’) was coming to let them crown him their Emperor. Farnol knew it would have been different in the Afghan hills where the tribesmen had a political sense that kept their knives sharp and their guns hot. But in the mountain fastnesses kings had held no sway: a man lived and died subject only to his father, his village chief and the gods who ruled them all.

At the gates to the curving drive leading up to the Viceregal Lodge Farnol and his entourage were halted by two guards. The two soldiers prodded the tall dirty hillman and told him to clear out.

‘Nickle-jao! Piss off!’

‘I shall not piss off. I am Major Farnol, of Farnol’s Horse, reporting to Colonel Lathrop. Take that bayonet out of my belly.’

The soldiers peered at him, then one said to the other, ‘Escort him up to the house, Mick. Let them make up their mind who he is. Give him a poke up the arse if he tries anything. I’ll keep this lot down here.’

Farnol walked up the long sloping drive, the guard right behind him with his bayonet at the ready. He did not blame the soldiers for their attitude; one rarely found rankers who were happy in their work these days. A shilling and fourpence a day and a seven-year contract did nothing to make India an attractive tour of duty. Their devotion to duty had not been improved by the policies of the previous Viceroy, Lord Curzon, who had favoured more freedom and rights for the natives; nor had Lady Curzon, an American lady, fired them with enthusiasm when she had said that the two ugliest creatures in India were the water-buffalo and the British private soldier. A poke up the arse with a bayonet was something a man who looked like an Indian and claimed to be a British officer should not find unexpected or even unreasonable.

They came to the junction in the drive where one arm led to the rear of the huge house and the other to the portico over the front entrance. Farnol looked up at the mansion towering against the pale pink of the western clouds. Each time he came here he was amused by the extravagance of it, the incongruity of this massive country house that paid no respects to its foreign location. But it had the most magnificent site in Simla and he always enjoyed walking in its gardens. Ten years ago, when he had been a very junior aide on the staff of Lord Curzon, he had been standing on the south lawn when the Viceroy had come and stood beside him.

‘Have you a liking for vistas, Farnol? Are you long-sighted?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He knew that the Viceroy liked to think he had a poetic imagination.

‘I sit here and imagine I can see all of India all the way south to the Coromandel Coast.’ Tall though Farnol was, he always felt that the Viceroy was just that much taller. Curzon held his long narrow head in such a way that he always seemed to be looking down on people. It was partly his natural arrogance, but he also had back trouble which forced him to stand very upright: so can minor afflictions set one’s image for history. One of the last great imperialists, though neither he nor virtually anyone else saw it that way, he looked upon India as his own domain; he would not have been embarrassed by any modesty if it had been suggested that he should be crowned Emperor. ‘And I rule it all in the King’s name.’

A mere subaltern didn’t query such illusions of grandeur. ‘A great responsibility, sir.’

Then Curzon smiled, showing the sense of humour that was rarely seen. Or was it something else, a sense of irony at his claim to being long-sighted? ‘It is all just in one’s imagination.’

Then he had nodded abruptly and gone back to the house and Farnol had been left wondering. A breeze suddenly blew up, whispering through the deodars, and he had shivered, felt the chill of the unknown years ahead.

The bayonet poked him in the buttock. ‘Turn right, matey. We’re going in the back way.’

‘We’re going in the front way. Stick me in the arse again with that bayonet and I’ll shove it down your throat. What’s your name?’

The soldier lowered his rifle, shook his head, then snapped to attention. ‘You got to be an officer. No coolie would talk to me like that. Sorry, sir. Can’t be too careful.’

‘I said, what’s your name?’

‘Mick Ahearn, sir. Private Ahearn.’

‘Irish, eh? Are you with the Connaughts?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Farnol knew of the Connaught Rangers’ contempt for Indians; their unofficial motto was that those who had been conquered by the sword must be kept by the sword. Since swords were not standard issue, they settled for a jab with a bayonet or a boot up the behind of the conquered. ‘In future, Private Ahearn, make sure you have the right coolie before you start blunting your bayonet on him.’

Ahearn followed Farnol up to the big portico and waited while Farnol went up the steps and rang the bell beside the wide front doors. The Indian butler who answered the bell was even more brusque than the soldier had been in dismissing the dirty, ragged hillman. But Farnol pushed him aside, strode into the huge high-ceilinged entrance hall and demanded to see Colonel Lathrop. At that moment a man appeared on one of the galleries that ran around the upper floors of the hall.

‘What’s going on down there? Who’s that ruffian? Have him thrown out!’

Farnol looked up and recognized the man on the gallery. Oh God, he thought, not him! But he bounded up the wide stairs, came out on to the gallery and advanced on Major Rupert Savanna, who was slapping his pockets as if looking for a gun.

‘Savanna, old chap, how are you? I know you think I’m a ruffian, but you don’t have to spread it around amongst the servants. Where’s Lathrop?’

Savanna was an unfortunate man. He was plain to the point of anonymity; he would have been more identifiable had he been ugly. Everyone tended to overlook him and so he had made himself more unfortunate: he had become aggressive to be recognized and only succeeded in antagonizing everyone he met. He hated India and everyone on the whole sub-continent; but he knew that if he went back to England he would be even more anonymous and overlooked. He was hard-working, a rare quality amongst the British officers in India, and his diligence, if nothing else, had raised him to a senior staff position in the Political Service, the diplomatic corps of the Viceroy. It was said that he had been promoted on the assumption that a man so disliked would not have any friends to whom he might leak a confidence.

‘Farnol? Good God, man, do you have to come up here looking like that? Couldn’t you have spruced yourself up?’

‘I’ll do that later. Where am I staying – down at Squire’s Hall?’

‘Afraid not – the painters are in there. You’ll have to stay here.’ Savanna looked as if he were offering a pi-dog a room for the night. ‘We’re all staying here. Got permission from His Excellency, just for the two nights. The Durbar Train leaves tomorrow. I presume you’ll be coming down to Delhi?’

‘Of course. Where’s George?’

‘Afraid he’s not here. Went back to Delhi yesterday, got tired of waiting for you. You were due here a week ago.’

‘Blast!’ Farnol leaned against the balustrade, restrained himself from spitting down into the well of the entrance hall. He looked sideways at the portly little man with the very pale blue eyes and the blank face behind the ginger moustache. ‘I was held up by a landslide the other side of the Satluj, I had to make a detour. I was ambushed, too.’

‘I say! Lose any bearers?’ Savanna dreamed of being a hero but was glad he was a desk-wallah. Dreams were safer than deeds and he feared the day when he would have to act. ‘Better put that in your report to me.’

‘To you?’

Savanna flushed. ‘Of course. I’m your superior officer, am I not? George Lathrop asked me to stay on here and bring your report down with me when I go.’

‘What I have to report will need to get to him quicker than that. I’ll encode it and you can put it on the telegraph line to him tonight.’

‘I shall want to know what’s in the report before you encode it. I can’t authorize its despatch if I don’t know what’s in it.’

Farnol sighed, scratched himself through his rags. It was always the same when he came back from the hills: as soon as he was within smell of hot water and soap he began to itch. The same irritation affected him whenever he was within smell of a desk-wallah. ‘Righto, whatever you say. I’ll put it all down in clear first. The gist of it is that I think there is a plot to assassinate the King.’

Savanna gave a half-cough, half-laugh. ‘Oh, I say! You expect me to put something like that on the telegraph to Delhi? They’d laugh their heads off. What proof have you?’

Farnol sighed again, scratched himself once more: Savanna, more than any of the other desk-wallahs, always did get under his skin more than the dirt and the lice. ‘None. Just suspicions.’ He quickly recounted the story of the ambush. ‘It ties in with what I heard further up in the hills.’

‘What did you hear? Rumours?’ Savanna shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, old chap. I can’t put that sort of clap-trap on the telegraph. It would be one thing to mention it personally to Lathrop, one can bandy suspicions back and forth all day across a desk. But to put it in code on the telegraph –’ He shook his head again, adamantly this time: after all, he was the senior officer, even if their ranks were the same. ‘Can’t be done. There have been plots and rumours of plots ever since the days of John Company. There’s sure to be one about His Majesty – what better way to create a little mischief? You know what these Indians are. But no one down in Delhi would believe it was anything more than a rumour. They’re all too busy getting spruced up for the Durbar.’

Farnol knew that plots to kill the British, or their leaders, were not new. Ever since the East India Company, John Company as it was called, built its first trading post in 1640, there had been resistance to the British presence in India and the neighbouring countries. The Indian Mutiny of sixty years ago had not blown up on the spur of the moment; the Afghan Wars had not been riots of sudden bad temper. Conspiracies for independence had been uncovered; one or two princes had rebelled and been firmly put back in their place. But no Viceroy, the King’s representative, had died from an assassin’s bullet or knife. They had died from cholera or malaria or boredom, but that had been only the climate of the country and not the climate of the population demanding its wage or revenge. Savanna was right: now, especially now, no one would take any notice of a rumour that hadn’t a shred of concrete evidence to back it. Farnol had been at the Great Durbar, Curzon’s durbar of 1903, and he remembered how for a month before it no one had had any thought for anything but the social events that accompanied it. With the King and Queen due within the week he could imagine the pushing and jostling, like beggars scrambling for coins in a bazaar, that would be going on down in the new capital.

‘All right, I’ll hold the report till we get down to Delhi.’

Savanna stiffened with six years’ seniority. ‘You can still write it in clear and give it to me.’

‘I’ll write it on the train going down.’ Farnol straightened up, daring Savanna to command him to write the report immediately. But the other knew his limitations, knew when he sounded petulant rather than commanding. He stayed silent and after a moment Farnol said, ‘Do I have to dress for dinner? Are there only you and I?’

‘Of course you’ll dress! The Ranee of Serog is coming to dinner and also the Nawab of Kalanpur – you know Bertie, a very decent chap. And there will be Baron von Albern and Lady Westbrook.’

‘Damn! I think I’ll dine in my room.’ Then he looked down and saw the girl in bowler hat and riding habit come into the hall below. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Miss O’Brady. An American gel. Evidently she met His Excellency and Lady Hardinge down in Delhi, told them she was coming up here and they invited her to stay at the Lodge. Can’t understand why. She’s not only American, she’s also one of those damned newspaper reporters.’

CHAPTER TWO
1

Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:

I have been to several memorable dinner parties in the course of a long and, forgive my smugness, very rewarding life. Once, when he and his wife had had a falling-out, Richard Harding Davis, that most handsome and dashing of foreign correspondents, took me to dinner at the White House; President Taft himself had to rescue me from the attentions and intentions of the French Ambassador, who had had a falling-out with his wife. On another occasion Mayor John Fitzgerald of Boston, known to everyone as Honey Fitz, called me up, knowing I was in New York for the night, and asked me to dinner with him at Rector’s with some friends from Tammany Hall. There amidst the cigar smoke, the bubbles of champagne and the giggles of the girls from the Music Hall chorus, I learned more about how a democracy is run than in several months of covering City Hall for the Boston Globe. I sometimes feel that one’s education can be improved more over the right dinner table than anywhere else, with the possible exception of under the counterpane. I speak, of course, as a lady of mature years whose education in both spheres was completed some time ago.

The most fateful dinner party, in personal terms, that I ever attended was at Viceregal Lodge in Simla in India in December 1911. The guests were as varied as one can only find in outposts of Empire; or could find, since empires, if they still exist, are no longer admitted. The acting host was a dull little man named Savanna, but everyone else at the long table in the huge panelled dining-room seemed to me to be an original, even the Nawab of Kalanpur, who did his best to be an imitation Englishman. But the most striking one there in my eyes, even though he may not have been strikingly original, was Major Clive Farnol.

He sat next to me as my partner and through most of dinner I saw little more of him than his profile. He told me later he had only that evening shaved off his beard; that accounted for the paler skin of his lower cheeks and jaw against the mahogany of the rest of his face. He had a good nose, deep-set blue eyes; but his face was too bony to be strictly handsome. He also had a nice touch of arrogance, an air I have always admired in the male sex. Humble men usually finish up carrying banners for women’s organizations.

‘You are writing the story of Lola Montez, Miss O’Brady?’ The Ranee of Serog was dressed as if for a State dinner or a trade exhibition of jewels. Of the upper part of her body only her elbows and armpits seemed undecorated with sparklers; she looked like Tiffany and Co. gone vulgar. She was a walking fortune, several million dollars on the hoof, as they say in the Chicago stockyards. She was dressed in a rich blue silk sari and once one became accustomed to the glare of her one could see that she was a beautiful woman. She was about forty which, from the youth of my then twenty-five years, seemed rather close to the grave. Now I am rather close to it myself I smile at the myopia of youth.

‘My grandfather knew her when she was Mrs James, a very young bride here in Simla,’ the Ranee said.

‘My father always boasted he was one of her first lovers.’ Lady Westbrook was an elderly woman of that rather dowdy elegance that the English achieve absent-mindedly, as if fashion was something that occurred to them only periodically like childbirth or an imperial decoration. But, I learned later, she drank her wine and port with the best of the men and smoked a cheroot in an ivory holder. ‘But that was only after he learned she finished up as the mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria. I suppose all men would like to think they shared a woman with a king.’

‘Not with King George,’ said the Nawab of Kalanpur and spilled his wine as he laughed. ‘I understand the Queen sends a company of Coldstream Guards with him every time he goes out alone. She’s rather a battle-axe when it comes to morality.’

‘I say, Bertie, that’s going too far.’ Major Savanna was a stuffed shirt such as I had only hitherto seen on Beacon Hill in Boston; I suppose one finds them all over the world, a breed hidebound by what they think is correct behaviour. ‘I hope you won’t put any of this conversation into your newspaper articles, Miss O’Brady?’

I had come to India to cover the Great Durbar in Delhi, one of the few women correspondents granted such permission. Females were still considered lesser beings in those days, even in the so-called enlightened offices of newspapers; some of the most bigoted male chauvinists I have met in a lifetime of such encounters have been newspaper editors. But I had been taken on as a cub reporter by the editor of the Boston Globe who owed a favour to someone who owed a favour to Mayor Honey Fitz, for whom my father worked as a ward boss. I had managed not to blot my notebook and gradually had been given assignments that had, after several years and with great reluctance on the part of the paper’s male management, resulted in my being granted a by-line. I had covered stories spread over a great deal of the United States and had attained a certain fame; or in certain circles where anyone who worked for a newspaper, regardless of their sex, was looked upon as a whore, a certain notoriety. Disgusted at the growing cost of Presidential inaugurations, the editor had decided to send me to India to see how the British Empire spent money on crowning an Emperor. It was I who had suggested that I should also do a story on Lola Montez, the Irish-born courtesan who had begun her career in Simla as a 15-year-old bride of a British officer. The editor, thinking of syndication, had readily agreed. There were probably fifty million housewives throughout the United States who were dreaming of being courtesans.

‘Quote every word, Miss O’Brady.’ Major Farnol up till then had offered only a few words, the crumbs of politeness that gentlemen offer to ladies in whom they are not particularly interested. But now he looked at me full face and I saw his gaze run quickly up from my bosom, over my shoulders and throat and up to my face and hair. I learned later that he was famous for swift appraisals of the landscape and was known amongst the Pathan tribesmen of Afghanistan as Old Hawkeye. ‘We must keep on with the good work done by the late King Edward, making our royalty appear human. We have suffered too long from Victorian stuffiness.’

‘Oh, I say!’ said the stuffed shirt at the top of the table.

‘Ach, no.’ The one-armed German Consul-General, Baron Kurt von Albern, leaned to one side while a servant took away his plate. He leaned stiffly and with his head seemingly cocked to balance the weight of his one arm; he looked rigid and very Prussian, though he was riot a Prussian. He had close-cropped grey hair, a thick grey moustache, wore gold-rimmed spectacles with a silk cord running down to his lapel and looked like Teddy Roosevelt without the bombast. ‘Kings should never appear human. They should always suggest a little mystery.’

‘Is there any mystery about the Kaiser?’ said Major Farnol. ‘Other than whether or not he wants to go to war with us?’

The Baron shook his great head sadly. ‘Always talk of war. The English and the Germans will never fight. Your own King is almost more German than he is English.’

‘More’s the pity,’ said Lady Westbrook. ‘Can’t understand why we ever let the Tudors go.’

‘Our King is beloved just as he is.’ Major Savanna seemed to have had a little too much to drink. He glared down the table in my direction and for a moment I wondered what America had done recently to bring on this aggression. Then I realized he was looking at Major Farnol. ‘That correct, Major?’

‘Perhaps in England. Here in India no one knows him.’

The King, as Prince of Wales, had visited India in 1905, but he had seen, and been seen by, very few more than the British civil and military brass and the Indian princes. Though England had ruled India for almost two centuries, no reigning monarch had ever set foot in the country. The monarch’s surrogates had been the real rulers, the Governors-General and the Viceroys who had had all the trappings of a king and almost as much power, possibly even more. The armorial bearings of all those surrogates hung from the walls above our heads, from the first of them, Warren Hastings, to the present one, Hardinge. Pictures of the monarch might hang in offices and railway stations and jungle bungalows, but everyone knew who was the actual British Raj of the moment.

‘I met him once at Lord’s,’ said the Nawab. ‘Came to see the Second Test against the Australians, looked bored stiff. Bally undiplomatic of him, I thought. That’s the German in him, I suppose.’

‘Being undiplomatic or being bored by cricket?’ said the Baron.

The Nawab laughed, a high giggle that didn’t go at all well with his appearance. He was rather saturnine, a look that went against the mould of the imitation Englishman he tried to be; when his face was in repose he looked slightly sinister, an image the English have washed from their countenances if not from their hearts.

‘Touché, Baron. It’s a pity you didn’t go to Harrow, as I did. With your physique they’d have made a jolly good fast bowler of you.’

‘It sounds a dreadful fate,’ said the Baron.

‘I don’t think the King should have come out here.’ The Ranee dismissed His Majesty with a wave of her hand, an explosion of diamond lights. ‘Anything could happen to him. He could be trodden on by an elephant, killed by a tiger. Accidents happen in this country.’

‘Planned accidents?’ said Major Farnol.

Perhaps I was too quick for an outsider; but what should a newspaperwoman be if not quick? ‘You mean an assassination?’

I saw Farnol and Savanna exchange glances. The Ranee also saw it: ‘What’s going on, gentlemen? Have you heard something?’

There was silence for a moment and it was obvious that the two majors were each waiting for the other to reply. Then Major Farnol said, ‘No, nothing.’

‘Of course not!’ But Savanna’s voice was not so loud from drink alone; he was far too emphatic. ‘Ridiculous! Their Majesties will be as safe here in India as in Buckingham Palace. Correct, Farnol?’

I saw Farnol’s jaw stiffen, but he nodded. ‘Of course.’

Then dinner was finished and the ladies rose to be banished as we always were. The port and the cigars were already being produced, but as we went out the door Lady Westbrook turned to one of the servants. ‘I’ll have a large port in the drawing-room. Better bring a small decanter.’

I sat with Lady Westbrook and the Ranee for half an hour, then I excused myself and went up to bed. I had been riding that afternoon and was genuinely tired. As I reached the gallery that led to the bedrooms I pulled up startled. Major Farnol sat in the shadows, in a large chair against the wall of the corridor.

‘Oh! I thought you were still downstairs with the other gentlemen.’

‘I just wanted to say goodnight, Miss O’Brady.’ He stood up, towering over me. He wore a tail-coat, the dinner jacket had not become universal with gentlemen, but the suit looked as if he had had it a long time; it was shiny and tight and he looked, well, caged in it. ‘Will you be going down with us on the Durbar Train? May I have the pleasure of escorting you?’

‘Only if you will tell me if you think King George is in danger of being assassinated.’ I’m afraid I was rather a direct person in those days. Perhaps I still am.

‘I thought you were interested only in Lola Montez?’

‘I have all the material I need on her. I’m a newspaper-woman, Major Farnol. A plot to assassinate a king is a story I’d give my right arm for.’

‘Both arms?’

We did not use the word corny in those days. ‘Major Farnol, I expected better than that of you. I’m not some high school girl panting to be taken.’

He smiled, then abruptly sobered. ‘All right, no flirting. No, Miss O’Brady, I know nothing about any assassination plot.’

‘I think you are a liar, Major.’ I gave him what I hoped was a sweet smile.

‘All the time.’

‘Goodnight, Major.’

I left him then, but I knew we were going to be talking to each other a lot over the next few days, whether he was a liar or not. In the course of her life a woman will meet a man, or several men if she is fortunate, with whom she feels an instant current of attraction. I had felt that way about Richard Harding Davis, but he was already married; I had also been strongly attracted to a well-known matinée idol, but he was in love with himself at the time and no woman can compete with that. I didn’t think Major Farnol would ever be in love with himself but he did strike me as being very self-contained, with few doubts about himself or anyone else, which can be just as frustrating for a woman. My trouble was that, being Boston Irish, I had such little mystery about me that might raise a doubt or two in his or any other man’s mind. A woman who loves love as much as I did, and still do, can be too honest for her own good.

But I was not thinking about love that night. I undressed in the big bedroom I’d been given and was brushing my hair when I heard voices in the corridor outside. Moments earlier I had heard voices down at the front of the house; that would have been the Ranee, Lady Westbrook and the Nawab and the Baron going home. Then the big house had been suddenly silent till I heard the raised voices out in the corridor.

I opened my door an inch and peered out. It was not a lady-like thing to do, but a newspaperwoman was not expected to be a lady; it was an implied contradiction in terms. Major Savanna, looking very much the worse for drink, was standing arguing with Major Farnol, whom I could not see.

‘You will not mention this ridiculous theory of yours again till we get down to Delhi! There you can do what you damn well please!’

‘Keep your voice down, Savanna. This isn’t a polo field.’

‘Don’t tell me – ! You’re absolutely insufferable, Farnol, insufferable! You keep your voice down – not another word about these rumours, you understand! That’s an order!’

He took a sudden step backwards and I realized that Farnol had abruptly shut the door of his room in his face. Savanna raised a fist as if he were about to batter down the door, then suddenly he went marching down the hall towards his own bedroom. Marching: it struck me that for a man who a moment ago had sounded drunk he was remarkably steady on his feet.

I closed the door, finished my toilette and got into bed. But I couldn’t sleep; I could smell a story like a magnetic perfume, ink brewed by M. Coty. I tossed and turned for an hour, then I made my decision. I got out of bed and put on my red velvet peignoir. It had been bought for Miss Toodles Ryan, the girl friend of Mayor Honey Fitz, but Toodles was annoyed with Hizzoner for some reason and she had given me the gown. Each time I put it on I felt the delicious thrill of being a kept woman, if only by proxy: the safest and least demanding way. Only a year before he was assassinated I mentioned Toodles Ryan to President Kennedy and he, Boston Irish and a ladies’ man, winked and smiled. Honey Fitz’s hormones were still alive and well in 1962.

I looked at my hair in the mirror, saw that my tossing and turning had made it into a fright wig. I hastily pushed it up, looked around for something to hold it in place, saw the derby, the bowler hat I had worn that day while riding and shoved it on my head. I remembered one of the few pieces of advice my mother had given me when I told her I was determined to go out into the sinful Protestant world and make my own way: ‘Always wear a hat, sweetheart. That way you’ll always be thought of as a lady, if only from the neck up.’

Clasping my notebook and pencil I opened my door, crossed the corridor and tapped gently on Major Farnol’s door. Then I opened it and stepped inside. And felt the pistol pressing against the back of my neck.

The electric light was switched on. Major Farnol was dressed in pale blue silk pyjamas and looked absolutely gorgeous.

‘They’re not mine – I found them in a drawer. I think they belong to one of the A.D.C.s. Heaven knows what sort of chap wears things like these.’

‘You’re wearing them.’

‘Just as well, if a half-naked woman calls on me in the middle of the night. Do you usually wear a bowler when you go prowling bedrooms?’

I crossed to a chair beside the bed. ‘You may get back into bed, Major. You’re perfectly safe. This is a professional call.’

‘Do you charge for your services?’

I don’t know where Major Farnol learned his badinage with Women. I discovered later that he had had considerable success with them, but it could not have been because of his conversational approach. ‘Put your gun away, Major, and get into bed. I’ve taken you at your word that you’re a liar and I don’t believe you when you say there is no plot to assassinate the King.’

He put the pistol on a bedside table and got beneath the covers. Thinking back, it was one of the strangest interviews I ever conducted. Both of us were aware of the atmosphere around us: he in his glamorous pyjamas, I in my peignoir (even if the bowler did dampen the effect), and the wide bed itself. But I was there on business and I was determined to keep it that way.

‘Tell me what you really think is going on, Major.’

He shook his head. ‘Miss O’Brady, I am what is called a political agent.’

‘Is that something like a ward boss? My father is one in Boston.’ I explained what my father did in the interests of democracy and the Democratic Party, which are not necessarily the same thing.

‘No, I don’t think there’s too much similarity. I suppose one could say I’m a cross between your Secret Service and one of your Indian agents from the Wild West.’

‘But that’s exactly what a ward boss is.’

‘Well, I’m sure your father doesn’t give away secrets to the chaps from the newspapers. Or even to you, I’ll wager.’

‘Not unless he’s looking for favours.’ I saw the gleam in his eye and got in first: ‘Please, Major. No more flirting. So you won’t tell me what you suspect?’

‘No.’ There was no badinage there: his voice was flat and emphatic.

‘I could write my story without your corroboration.’

‘If you did that and I should ever meet you again, I’d tan your bottom.’

‘An officer and a gentleman?’

‘I make no claim to the latter title. Goodnight, Miss O’Brady. Please turn off the light as you go out.’

I was used to being dismissed, that was part of the game in my profession; but somehow the dismissal by him hurt me. I knew I had brought it on myself, but there are certain occasions when a woman wishes she could retire with dignity. I tried for that as I walked towards the door, but even then I knew that in my peignoir and derby I could not look regal or even viceregal.

I stopped at the door and turned. ‘You and I are not finished with each other, Major. I do not give up easily.’

‘Nor I, Miss O’Brady. Goodnight.’

I switched off the electric light and opened the door. The club thumped down on my bowler hat and I slumped to the floor.

End of extract from memoirs.

2

Farnol leapt out of bed as the man, masked by a ragged scarf, jumped over the girl and came at him, the club in one hand and a long dagger in the other. Farnol grabbed for the gun on the bedside table, but in the gloom of the darkened room, his eyes still full of the just extinguished electric light, his hand fumbled and knocked the gun to the floor. The intruder dived across the bed at him and he flung himself back, just avoiding the swish of the dagger. He stumbled around in the unfamiliar room, bumped against a clothes-horse. He picked it up and swung it, hitting the assassin full in the face with the wooden shoulders inside his tail-coat. The man let out a gasp and staggered back and Farnol, eyes accustomed to the darkness now, went after him. The thug swung the club blindly and Farnol grunted as it grazed his ribs.

Then the man was past him, jumping over the still prostrate Bridie in the doorway and racing out into the corridor. Farnol scrambled after him, not stopping to waste time in looking for his gun. The man appeared to know his way about the huge house. He ran along the dimly-lit corridor, out on to the gallery and down the wide stairs. Farnol, a blue silk streak, was only a few stairs behind him as they reached the entrance hall. The thug made no attempt to go out the front doors, as if he knew he might run into one of the roving picquets in the main drive. Instead he went straight down towards the ballroom. Farnol grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from a table and chased after him.

The man was tall and thin, as tall as Farnol; and he was swift, just that much swifter than Farnol. His clothes were ragged, but he was recognizable as a hillman: the dark turban wound Pathan style, the blue scarf round his face and the sheepskin jerkin said he wasn’t from the plains.

The next two or three minutes were like some bizarre conducted tour of the Lodge. The two men raced through the huge moonlit ballroom, skidding on the polished floor; through into the dining-room where the logs in the big fireplace still glowed; back across the hall to the drawing-room. Here the thug ran headlong into the great velvet curtain that draped its entrance; he dropped his club and tried to slash his way through the heavy cloth with his knife. Farnol caught him and grappled with him, but once again the man got away. He raced back up the stairs and still Farnol pursued him, wielding the candlestick. But the man was frantic now, drawing away from Farnol with every step. He tore down the corridor between the bedrooms. At the far end Farnol glimpsed the open window. The thug went through it without seeming to lose speed. Farnol reached the window, pulled up gasping and looked down, expecting to see the man spreadeagled on the ground below.

But the thug had not committed suicide; once again he had shown he knew the lie of the land around the Lodge. There was a great deodar tree outside the window and Farnol saw the stout branch still going up and down from the weight of the man as he had landed on it. A moment later he saw the man run out from the black shadow at the base of the tree, race across the lawn, vault the balustrade and disappear. There was no point in shouting for the guard; they would never find the thug in the tangled growth down the steep hillside below the lawn. Farnol turned back, still holding the candlestick, and hurried back along the corridor to his room.

Bridie was sitting up, feet spread out in front of her, back against the door, her crushed hat in her lap. She looked at him as he squatted down beside her. ‘Did you get him? I saw you gallop past.’

‘He got away. How are you?’

‘It will teach me not to go uninvited into a man’s room.’ She stood up, taking his arm; he could feel she was still shaken. ‘I’m all right, I think. I’ll have a headache in the morning.’

He had to admire her composure. The women who had lived in these hills for years were accustomed to the regular emergency: he would have expected them to recover quickly. But Miss O’Brady was a city girl and an American one at that: he knew little or nothing about Boston or New York but he guessed that ladies there did not have to face emergencies too often. ‘I must say, Miss O’Brady, you’re not the hysterical sort, are you?’

‘I suppose that’s an Englishman’s compliment, is it? Thank you. No, I’m not the hysterical sort.’

‘Jolly good.’

Assured that she was uninjured except for a sore head, he abruptly left her, went along to the gallery and looked down into the entrance hall. Then he came back.

‘I wonder where all the servants are? It’s late, but I thought someone would have heard me chasing that chap up and down the stairs. Go back to your room and lock the door.’

‘No. I’ll stay with you till . . . You’re worried about something.’

She was still shaken, but she was recovering fast. Her auburn hair hung down over her shoulders in wild disarray, her voice was a little breathless, she held her bowler hat before her like a battered beggar’s bowl. She was a damned good-looking woman. He wished he had met her a week later, down in Delhi.

‘We’ll go and wake up Major Savanna. He’s probably dead to the world with all that drink he had.’

They went down the corridor to the room at the end. Its door was beside the open window through which the thug had escaped; the cold night air pressed in against them and Farnol shut the window. Then he knocked on Savanna’s door.

With still no answer to his third knock, he opened the door and went in. He fumbled for the light switch, clicked it on. The room was empty, the big four-poster bed unslept in. On the bed was tossed Savanna’s tail suit, his boiled shirt and his dress suit. The wardrobe’s doors were open and the clothes were strewn on the floor in front of it.

‘Right, go back to your room, lock the door and stay there.’ He was already on his way back along the corridor. He still carried the heavy brass candlestick, as if he had forgotten it was still in his hand. He paused by Bridie’s door, swung it open and motioned with the candlestick for her to go in. He looked and sounded like a schoolmaster who had found a pupil in some after-lights-out escapade. ‘Come on – inside! Lock the door. I’ll be back!’

He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed him. He went back to his own room, dragged on the clothes nearest to hand, the tailcoat and dress trousers, over his pyjamas, pulled on his shoes; then, still carrying the candlestick but also his pistol this time, he went down to the entrance hall. He switched on lights, found a bell-pull and gave it several tugs that almost pulled it out of the ceiling, creating a carillon effect down in the depths of the servants’ quarters. In less than two minutes the butler and two bearers, stumbling with haste, puzzlement and the effects of the sleep from which they had been disturbed, came up from the rear of the house. With them was Karim Singh, the only one who looked fully alert.

‘Where’s Major Savanna?’ Farnol addressed the butler, an elderly Punjabi who had a proprietary interest in the Lodge; he had seen Viceroys come and go, none of them had the tenure that a good servant had. ‘Did he say anything to you about going out tonight?’

‘No, sahib.’ The butler looked bewildered and indignant: it wasn’t right that he should be aroused in the middle of the night, in His Excellency’s own house, and rudely interrogated by this army officer who was only a major, not even a colonel. ‘He should be asleep in his room.’

‘He isn’t – his bed hasn’t been slept in. And I’ve had a chap in here who tried to kill me.’ He didn’t mention Bridie. The attack on her had been accidental, he was certain, and he wanted to protect her from any further involvement.

The two bearers hissed with shock, looked over their shoulders, waiting for another attack. The butler said, ‘I regret that, sahib. It has never happened before. His Excellency will be most disturbed –’

‘I’m sure he will. Karim, get down to the guard-house, get the guard up here on the double –’

‘You can call them on the telephone, sahib.’ The butler lifted a big red velvet cover, like a huge tea-cosy, from a side-table, exposing a telephone. ‘We have every modern convenience.’

Every modern convenience but an effective guard system. Farnol called the guard-house and a minute later there was a banging on the front door. The butler, moving with all the dignity of a State occasion, went to the doors and opened them. Three soldiers came plunging in, a sergeant and two rankers, one of them Private Ahearn.

‘How many did you have on picquet tonight?’ Farnol demanded.

The sergeant blinked in the light; he, too, had been sound asleep down in the guard-house. ‘May I ask who you are, sir?’

‘Major Farnol.’ He saw Ahearn’s eyebrows go up; then he remembered he had shaved off his beard. ‘Private Ahearn escorted me up here earlier this evening.’

The sergeant stood to attention. ‘Four men on picquet, sir. Did they miss something?’

‘They missed a bloody thug who got in here and tried to kill me. He got away, went down the south side of the hill. There’s no point in going after him,’ he said as the sergeant looked over his shoulder to give an order to Ahearn and the other ranker. ‘He’ll be halfway to Kalka by now. Have you seen Major Savanna at all?’

The sergeant looked at his two men and Ahearn said, ‘Yes, sir. He went out on his horse about half an hour ago.’

‘Riding?’

‘Yes, sir. I thought it was a bit queer, too.’

‘How was he dressed?’

‘Why, like he was going on a trip, sir.’ Ahearn was a young man, skinny and short, with the long Irish upper lip, thick black eyebrows that looked like caterpillars ready to advance on the potato of his nose and an expression that hinted he had come out of his mother’s womb without bothering to bring any innocence with him. ‘Breeches, bandolier, the lot. He had a rifle in his saddle scabbard.’

‘You don’t miss much.’

‘No, sir. The Irish can’t afford to.’

‘That’s enough!’ snapped the sergeant, Irish too, but careful of his sergeant’s pay. A few shillings a day extra could buy an Empire-builder, Farnol thought. ‘Do you want me to send someone after the Major, sir?’

‘Did he say where he was going?’ Farnol looked back at Ahearn.

‘No, sir. Didn’t say a word, just rode right by me like I wasn’t there.’

Farnol now was mystified and worried; but did his best not to show it. ‘Righto, sergeant. Double the picquet, stay up here close to the house. I’ll see you at six in the morning. Dismiss.’

The soldiers went away, then Farnol dismissed the butler and the two bearers. At last he looked at Karim Singh. ‘It was meant to be another ambush, Karim.’

‘I should never have left your door, sahib.’ Karim was looking around him, shaking his head in wondering disgust. He had a proper respect for surroundings and something was wrong with the scheme of things when some bugger would try to murder a British officer in the Viceroy’s own house. ‘I should be ashamed that I went down to the servants’ quarters and allowed myself the luxury of a charpoy. To sleep in a bed is jolly marvellous, but not while your master has his throat cut.’

‘Bring your things up to my room and sleep inside my door.’

Karim disappeared towards the depths of the house and Farnol climbed the stairs. Normally a clear thinker, his mind now seemed a mud-heap of confusion. He was no stranger to mystery; that was part of the trade of a political agent. But, had he ever had occasion to give the matter any thought, he would have classified Rupert Savanna as the least mysterious man in India, no more opaque than the air of these mountains on a clear day, every thought, prejudice and remark open to even the simplest intelligence. He tried to run his mind back over the evening, rummaging for a clue that might have hinted at Savanna’s intention to depart secretly; but he could think of nothing, Savanna had been as bland as his boiled shirt-front. In future he would watch Rupert Savanna more closely.

At the top of the stairs Bridie was waiting for him. She was still in her peignoir and her hair was still down round her shoulders; but she had run a brush through it and she looked beautiful and composed. He wondered at the mysteries he might find in her if given the opportunity.

‘Is everything safe now?’

‘I think so. I just hope Major Savanna is safe. He’s –’

‘I heard. I’ve been standing up here listening.’

‘Well, there’s nothing we can do till morning.’

‘If he hasn’t returned by then, you might ask the Ranee where he is. I was down in the hall this evening when she arrived. I heard her tell him that if he wasn’t gone by this morning, he would have her to answer to.’

3

Savanna had not returned by morning. Farnol borrowed two horses from the Lodge stables and he and Karim rode along one of the lower roads to the Barracks. Simla was the summer capital of the Government of India and for eight months of the year the sub-continent was ruled from the over-crowded, stacks-on-the-mill town clinging to its narrow-spined ridge. In late October the government departments moved back to Calcutta where the commercial population, swallowing its sourness at having been deprived of all the summer trade, welcomed them with over-stocked stores and inflated prices, a state of business affairs that lasted only a few days, after which both resentment and prices fell. Next year the government would be moving to Delhi for those months when it was not at Simla and the merchants of Calcutta were ready to start their own Mutiny for being thus deserted.

Simla had a year-round British population and all the government departments kept on skeleton staffs there during the winter months. The main part of the army battalions went back to the plains with the government, but a company was always kept on duty in the big Barracks.

Captain Weyman, red-faced and red-eyed, pickled in gin and sour cynicism, was the company commander. ‘No, I haven’t seen Major Savanna in the week he’s been up here. He’s one of those Lodge blighters, can’t see down his nose as far as us barracks-wallahs. Are you a friend of his?’

‘No. I’m with Farnol’s Horse.’

‘Your name’s Farnol, too? Oh yes, I’ve heard of you. One of the club, eh?’

Farnol recognized the type: a British Army officer who had come out to India hoping to transfer to one of the posh Indian Army regiments and had not been accepted. He knew the snobbery attached to such acceptance and did not accept it but he had never made an issue of it. One either lived with it or one got out of the regiment; of course he had been accepted because he had been born into Farnol’s Horse. But, though he would not have admitted it to anyone, he had partly turned his back on the system by becoming a political agent.

‘If you like. Then Major Savanna didn’t come down here during the night and ask for an escort?’

‘Blighter’s missing, eh? You want me to send out a search party?’ But Weyman showed he had no real concern for the safety of the missing Savanna, the Lodge snob.

‘Never mind. Thanks for the offer.’

Weyman smiled at the sarcasm. ‘Always glad to help you Indians.’

As they rode away Karim Singh said, ‘Why do they dislike us Indians so much, sahib?’

Farnol smiled at the Sikh’s implied designation of Indians: he meant the Indian Army, of which he was a proud member. ‘Because we are the fortunate ones.’

‘You think so?’ Karim pondered while he rode; then he nodded. ‘I suppose so. We are the best of all, aren’t we?’

Perhaps, thought Farnol; but he wondered if all the circles of British life in India rode in their own small circle of mirrors. The lady he was going to see, though not British, spent her life looking in mirrors, cracked though some of them might be.

The Ranee of Serog’s small domain began on the first ridge south of the Simla ridge and ran almost down to Kalka, the rail junction at the foot of the ranges. She had a palace somewhere in her territory, but neither Farnol nor anyone else from Simla had ever been invited there; she also owned one of the largest houses in Simla itself. She had never become like her neighbour, the Nawab of Kalanpur, more British than the British; but she liked the social life of this very social town and the unattached men that it offered. It had more appeal than living in the palace with her half-mad brother.

Once the servant who had announced him had left the room, Farnol was greeted by slim arms that wrapped themselves round his neck and a mouth that smothered him with a kiss that had nothing to do with caste or class. ‘Darling Clive! You hardly looked at me last night! I wondered if those Tibetan lamas had got to you, converted you to celibacy or something.’

They had been lovers a year ago, but he had thought that was all past history. The Ranee collected lovers as she collected gems; she had once told him that she graded her men as she did her diamonds. She had classified him as a perfect blue-white, which he had thought must be the ultimate till he had found himself superseded by an Italian Consul who was evidently a superior gem in bed, the Ranee’s preferred setting. He wondered where the Italian was now, whether he, too, had been replaced by someone even closer to perfection.

Farnol withdrew from her arms and the musky smell of her perfume. She wore no other jewellery this morning than a double-strand necklace of pearls and a heavy gold bracelet that looked like a more expensive class of shackle.

‘Come and have breakfast with me like we used to! You are lucky to find me out of bed so early. But I have to catch that train this afternoon and there is so much one has to do!’

She had a large staff who did everything but blow her nose for her. She was the hedonist supreme and when he had been her lover he had enjoyed humouring her. It was almost six months since he had last had a woman, a young lady out on a visit from England who in private had proved to be no lady at all; looking at the Ranee now, still feeling her body against him, he was sorely tempted to forget other things for half an hour or so. But no, he told himself: he hadn’t come here to make love to her or banter with her.

‘Mala, where is Major Savanna?’

She put her spread hand to her bosom; her gestures at times could be as extravagant as her jewellery. ‘Darling, you don’t think I’ve taken him to my bed, do you?’

He sighed patiently. He hated arguing with women or interrogating them, either as lover or political agent. ‘Did I suggest that? I’m not jealous, Mala, I’m here on business. Do you know where he is?’

The Ranee was not only vain and nymphomaniacal, she was also as shrewd as any trading woman from the bazaars. She had kept her voluptuous looks and she was confident that for some years yet she would not have to do more than lift a finger to have men come to her bed; she had only contempt for any will-power that men professed to have below the navel. But she would never be subject to any of them for, with her, love was a hunger of the body and not the heart.

‘Don’t be sharp with me, Major Farnol. I don’t keep track of minor government officials.’

‘Your Highness –’ He hadn’t called her that in private since their first meeting. ‘You know Major Savanna is more than a minor government official.’

‘Oh? What is he then?’ Through the windows of the large morning-room in which they stood he could see a hawk planing on the breeze, ready to pounce: it struck him that her voice was suddenly like the hawk’s flight, lazy but alert.

‘You know he is like me, a political agent, a senior one.’ He didn’t mention the Secret Service, though that was not its official name; nothing was secret if it was talked about. ‘You were heard last night to tell him that if he wasn’t gone by this morning, he would have you to answer to. How is it that a British officer, who isn’t seconded to your service, has to answer to you?’

The hawk had dropped out of sight, fallen on some invisible prey. A monkey clambered up and sat on the window-sill and the Ranee walked towards it and snapped at it. It looked at her with its decadent child’s eyes, clicked its teeth at her, then disappeared below the sill. The Ranee leaned out of the window, as if she were actually interested in where the monkey had gone. At last she turned back into the room.

‘Whom do you have spying on me, Major? One of the servants up at the Lodge? I think His Excellency would be interested in that.’

‘You’re free to complain to him, Your Highness.’ They were now exhibiting the cold formality of ex-lovers, which has the same chill as that of diplomats about to declare war on each other.

‘I’m afraid your spy, whoever it was – Was it that beautiful Miss O’Brady? But you’d never met her, had you? And the Americans, I’m told, are such poor spies anyway. They think everything should be open and above-board. So naïve.’

‘Why not take an example from them?’

‘Ah, Major –’ She softened for a moment, but he was not yet Darling Clive again. ‘What secrets have I ever kept from you? No, your spy has a ringing in his ears, I’m afraid. All I said to Major Savanna was that I’d see him on the train this afternoon. I was just being polite. I’d rather not spend the journey with him down to Kalka and Delhi. He’s a frightful bore. I wonder what Mrs Savanna sees in him?’

‘There is no Mrs Savanna, as far as I know.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ The Ranee had only contempt for wives. She had been fortunate enough to inherit her domain, her fortune and her position direct from her father and she had never had to pay homage to any man but him. Marriage was a state of disgrace into which no woman should ever allow herself to fall.

‘Then you can’t tell me where he is?’ He did not call her a liar, as he might have a village woman he’d been interrogating. After all she was, in theory if not in practice, a sovereign ruler, even if she was at present out of her territory.

‘No, Major, not at all.’ She gazed at him blandly, her dark eyes as unrevealing as the monkey’s had been. ‘Let’s hope he is on the train when we leave at one o’clock.’

‘Let’s hope so, Mala. Otherwise I may have to come back to you.’

‘Do that, Clive. Do you still snore when you lie on your back?’

He left her on that less formal note and went out to where Karim waited for him with the horses. All up and down the road he could see gharrys and tongas being loaded with trunks and suitcases; the Durbar Train this afternoon looked as if it would be packed. Residents who had not been down to Delhi in years were making the journey; many had never been there, being only acquainted with Calcutta or Bombay or some army cantonment. But they’d have gone to Timbuctoo if His Majesty, God bless him and the Queen, had invited them. Their invitations to the receptions and levees were more carefully packed than their frocks and suits and dress uniforms.

Farnol and Karim walked their horses down to the road that ran through the bazaar. Storekeepers offered them everything from food to elixirs; the smell of curry and fried cakes thickened the thin mountain air; voices, the bleat of a goat, the piping of a musician, the chorus of a bazaar, impressed themselves on the ear. Two men, shoulder to shoulder, a four-legged beast with a two-humped back, came down the narrow street and the crowd fell back; the men carried a tree-trunk twenty feet long and two feet thick; Farnol and Karim dragged their horses into a side alley and the men went past, faces set like stone, trance-like under their massive burden. A small band of Tibetans sauntered down the road, long hair falling down to their shoulders, sheepskin jackets hanging to their knees; dirt cracked on their faces as they smiled and waved their long wooden pipes at the storekeepers, who forgave them their ragged and filthy appearance because they knew these Tibetans were truthful and honest and not thieves like some of their own kind. Two government messengers in scarlet and gold strutted down the middle of the road, self-important as bantam cocks; monkeys sat on roof-tops and mocked them. Farnol and Karim moved through the press of the crowd and as ever Farnol felt the pleasure he always did when he was in a bazaar. If you were to understand India, this was where you had to come.

Then up ahead, surrounded by beggars and storekeepers, he caught a glimpse of Miss O’Brady.

Karim shouted to the crowd to let the sahib through and began whacking about him with his lathi. The horses shied and Farnol had his attention distracted from Bridie as he tried to quieten his horse. When he looked back towards her he did not immediately see her; instead he saw the two men pushing through the crowd on the far side, one of them faintly familiar. Then he recognized the blue scarf and the sheepskin jerkin the man wore; he let go his horse and fought his way through the crowd, shouting to Bridie. His voice carried: Bridie suddenly popped up, as if she had been squatting down to look at something. And behind her the two men suddenly halted, looked across the heads of the crowd at Farnol. For just a moment he saw the dark eyes above the mask of the blue scarf on the taller of the two men; it was the man who had tried to kill him last night. Then abruptly the two men turned and bolted.

Farnol tried to thrust his way through the thick press of bodies, but one had to be as slippery as a bazaar thief to move quickly through a bazaar crowd. By the time he got as far as Bridie the men had disappeared from the far edge of the crowd, were gone down one of the steep alleys of steps to a lower level.

‘You shouldn’t have come down here!’ His voice was more curt than he intended, but he was concerned at how close she had come to being either murdered or kidnapped.

‘What’s the matter? I came down here to buy some last-minute things –’

He took her by the arm, more roughly than was necessary, pulled her behind him through the crowd as Karim, now dragging both horses, followed him. The crowd, sensing tension between the sahib and the memsahib, always glad of a free show, moved up the narrow road with them. He had always been at home with a bazaar crowd; all at once now he hated them and struck out with his free arm. The crowd fell back without resentment, or at least any show of it; they silently mocked the Europeans who always wanted space around them, as if they were some sort of holy men. When Farnol finally dragged Bridie into the clear he was more angry with himself than with the mob that had impeded him. He had once thought of himself as a champion of these people.

‘For Heaven’s sake – !’ Bridie, too, was angry with him. She straightened her hat and jerked down her sleeves. ‘What’s wrong with a little shopping? I was down here yesterday –’

‘Yesterday was yesterday,’ he said, sounding even in his own ears obvious and pedantic, as if he were talking to a child. ‘The man who tried to kill me last night was in that crowd. He was either going to harm you or kidnap you.’

The crowd now stood at a respectful distance, but still close enough to have their ears cocked. Voices were hissing for everyone to be quiet so that nothing would be missed of what the sahib and the memsahib said to each other. Farnol realized he had said too much and, once again angry at them, he turned on them and told them to clear off. Karim added his larger shout to that of his boss and the crowd reluctantly retreated.

Farnol and Bridie climbed the hill, with Karim bringing up the rear with the two horses. Bridie had regained her composure, though she was worried now rather than annoyed. ‘You really think he’d have kidnapped me? Or – ?’ She couldn’t bring herself to go on. She was not new to violence, she had reported on two murders and a strike battle; but she had always been at least one remove from it, a reporter and not a victim. She shied away from the thought of herself as a possible victim. ‘Why me?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps they wanted to trap me into coming after you.’

‘Would you?’ It was not coquetry: she suddenly felt alone and didn’t want to be. She looked back down the steep hill to the bazaar; backs were turned, the crowd was no longer interested in them, a living had to be made. But she saw the press of people, the river of bobbing heads between the banks of the ramshackle stores, and she saw the India in which one could so easily be lost.

‘Of course.’ He looked at her with sudden sympathy; and something more. ‘I say, I’m awfully sorry I was so rough with you. I tend to act a little quicker than I think.’

‘Trust to your reflexes.’ She managed a smile. ‘But I’ll know what to expect in future.’

‘How’s your head this morning?’

‘Just a small ache, not much. Have you been to see the Ranee? I asked for you at breakfast –’

They were walking along the road that led to the Lodge, under the overhang of the tall deodars. Far below he could see the train at the terminus, already being loaded for the afternoon’s journey down to Kalka. He counted eight carriages and twelve wagons; he couldn’t remember ever seeing such a long train and he wondered how it would handle the very narrow gauge track; it could be a long slow trip. Especially with the elephants, standing in the station yard, that would be later loaded on to the wagons. He guessed they would not be experienced train travellers and if the train got up too much speed, swaying on the numerous bends, they might go berserk.

‘The Ranee said she knew nothing about Major Savanna and that nobody could have heard her say that he was answerable to her.’

‘She’s a liar.’

He was not accustomed to women being so direct, not even the Ranee. ‘That’s what I think.’

‘Does she know it was me who overheard her?’

‘No, she thinks it was one of the servants. We’ll meet her again on the trip down, so watch you don’t give too much away.’

She paused and looked directly at him. ‘We’re in this together now, aren’t we?’

He hesitated, then with a mixture of apprehension and yet pleasure he said, ‘I’m afraid so, at least till we get to Delhi.’

Behind them Karim, ears as finely tuned as those of the bazaar crowd, twisted his mouth as if he had suddenly sucked on something sour. A woman’s place was not with men, they were nothing but trouble outside the bedroom or the kitchen. Was not the black deity of death a woman, Kali? He wondered if some poison had got into the sahib that he should show such weakness. He knew the sahib liked women and spent a lot of time in their bedrooms. But he looked and sounded different in his way with this American woman.

They came to the gates at the bottom of the Lodge drive. Half a dozen soldiers stood outside the guard-house, amongst them Captain Weyman, who looked distracted and angry.

‘What’s happening, you ask?’ he snapped at Farnol. ‘Everything, it seems. You tell me Major Savanna has disappeared. Now I’ve lost one of my men, just packed his kit and up and left.’

Farnol ran his eye over the soldiers, guessed who had deserted even before he asked, ‘Who’s gone?’

‘Chap named Ahearn, one of the detachment from the Connaughts. All the same, these damned Irishmen. Sorry, miss.’ He looked at Bridie twice, as if not appreciating her looks the first time.

In the background Farnol saw the soldiers, all Irishmen, look at each other as if they knew no apology would be handed to them.

‘There’s something else,’ said Weyman, peeved at the world, Irish or otherwise. ‘The telephone line and the telegraph wire down to Kalka have been cut.’

‘Cut? You mean someone actually cut the lines?’

‘Well, I don’t know if it’s actually that. Most likely a landslip somewhere has pushed some of the poles down a hill. I’ve sent a party down the lines to check. It’s a damned nuisance, though. Sorry, miss. But a day like this is enough to make any gentleman forget his manners.’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’ But Bridie could see that Farnol was troubled by more than Captain Weyman’s lapse of manners.

CHAPTER THREE
1

Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:

I had never seen such a train. I had travelled on campaign trains in the United States and they have a bizarre enough air to them, like a travelling fair, with political promises being sold like snake-oil and rhetoric streaming out from the rear platform thicker than the smoke from the locomotive up ahead. The Durbar Train made any campaign caravan look like a commuters’ drab streetcar. The carriages were festooned with ribbons and flags; that made them only imitations of American campaign cars. But no Presidential candidate had ever been trailed by wagon-loads of elephants, not even the Republicans in their wildest extravaganzas. There were twelve elephants, two to each of six wagons; there were two dozen horses, four to each of six wagons. And there were three flat-cars, two of them piled high with howdahs like wrecked fancy coracles, rolls of striped tents like rock candy, and a great sheaf of flags and pennants, the silver tips of their poles and lances glimmering in the afternoon sun. The third flat-car carried the Ranee of Serog’s state coach.

The British passengers on the train were sensibly dressed for the long dusty journey; there would be plenty of time down in Delhi for them to bring out their finery. But excitement and anticipation made their faces bright and I’d never heard such a chattering amongst a group of English; they sounded like the Italians I had heard down on Mulberry Street in New York, except for the vowel sounds. Their children, usually so well-behaved (whatever happened to well-behaved children? They now appear to be an extinct species), raced up and down without restraint. I wondered what the King, who was reputed to be a notoriously strict parent, would think of this wilfulness that his coronation had brought on. If Major Farnol thought there was still too much Victorian stuffiness prevailing, the Simla residents seemed determined to leave it behind them in the hills, at least for this journey.

The Ranee of Serog and the Nawab of Kalanpur, with their entourages, had arrived at the same moment, coming down opposite roads to meet at the junction just above the station in a traffic jam of rickshaws, tongas and doolies, those swaying contraptions carried by two or four bearers in which the passenger swung and bounced as on bumpy currents of air. Doolie passengers knew turbulence long before jet planes were invented. There were shouts and screams of argument between the drivers and bearers, then some British soldiers, who would be travelling on the train as an escort, rushed up and sorted out the jam, prodding beasts and humans alike with their bayonets. The colourful procession flowed like a slow rainbow-shot waterfall down the final incline to the station.

The Nawab, dressed for travelling but still looking like a peacock beside the sober English turkeys, came up to me, all charm and a mile-wide smile. ‘Where do you travel, Miss O’Brady, in which carriage?’

‘I don’t know. Wherever I can manage a seat, I suppose.’

‘Miss O’Brady! Don’t you know the precedence here in India? I am at the top, of course, being a prince. But the English have so many classes. Where will you fit in amongst them, a stranger and an American? Will you be with the pukka Brahmins of the ICS, the Indian Civil Service? Don’t you know Simla is known as the Heaven of the Little Tin Gods? Or will you be lower down the scale, with someone from the army perhaps? Or even further down, down there amongst the bally commercials, the bank managers and other low life? Travel with me in my carriage, Miss O’Brady. You need not sit with my wives but can keep me company. We’ll be jolly good company for each other.’

‘Your wives? Plural? You look like a bachelor if ever I saw one, Your Highness.’

He waved at his zenana of half a dozen wives. ‘What better way of being a bachelor than having more wives than one? I have more freedom than any bachelor who keeps a mistress. One woman is one too many, half a dozen is not enough. I should like several dozen, but the blighters cost money.’

He was laughable, a joke really; but something about him told me it would be dangerous to laugh at him. Perhaps he really did want to be English, but I found it hard to believe; he enjoyed being a prince too, even if only an Indian one. He would believe in precedence as much as any of the English he had just been maligning. Don’t we all? Hollywood didn’t invent the star system, it just followed historical custom.

Then there was a commotion some distance away and Lady Westbrook came sweeping down on to the platform. She was followed by a single servant toting a trunk and a suitcase, but she gave the impression that she was trailed by a whole retinue of bearers. She also gave the impression that she had decided to wear everything she hadn’t been able to pack into the trunk and suitcase. She was wearing two large-brimmed hats, one felt and the other straw, a tweed suit over which she had pulled on a long cardigan and an Inverness cape; over one arm she carried two more cardigans and round her neck was thrown a thick cashmere scarf. Nothing she wore matched anything else; she was a dazzling clash of colours. Everything about her suggested she had just come from a better sort of English bazaar. But she was a true eccentric, as distinct from today’s exhibitionists who try to pass as eccentric, and one knew she really had no idea how she looked nor did she care.

‘I am not sitting in there!’ she trumpeted at the station-master as he tried to usher her into the carriage immediately behind the engine. ‘You know blasted well where I’m entitled to sit! Give me my proper accommodation!’

The station-master, a mixed blood, a chee-chee as the English called them, was harassed and out of his depth. He tried to squeeze his painfully thin face in behind his toothbrush moustache. ‘Memsahib, all the other carriages are full –’

‘Then some people have seats to which they’re not entitled! Look at all those children! They should have been left at home with the cats and dogs – Ah, Bertie!’ She had sighted the Nawab, came barging along the platform like a runaway junk stall. ‘Do you have a spare seat in your carriage? Of course you must with all those wives. They can sit on each other’s laps. In there!’ She waved a hand to her servant and he struggled into the Nawab’s carriage with her trunk and suitcase. ‘Is Miss O’Brady travelling with us, Bertie?’

To my surprise the Nawab did not seem annoyed at Lady Westbrook’s intrusion. Instead he laughed and shook his head at me. ‘Ah, do you not love the English? They walk all over us and expect us to love them.’

‘Wrong, Bertie,’ said Lady Westbrook, taking out a cheroot and fitting it into her ivory holder. ‘We never look for love, that’s not an English need. What about you Americans, m’dear – do you look for love?’

‘All the time.’

‘Foolish – you’re due for so many disappointments.’ She puffed on her cheroot, looked up and down the platform. ‘Well, we’re going to be a jolly little party, aren’t we? If only they can keep those damned children quiet . . . Be off!’ She slapped at some children who were chasing each other round us. ‘Ah, here comes Major Farnol. My, how handsome he looks!’

She looked at me as soon as she said it and I recognized her as another of those banes of the lives of young presentable girls. She was a woman who, with too much time on her hands, exercised herself by playing match-maker. I looked away from her and at Major Farnol as he approached. Unlike most military men he moved with considerable grace; West Pointers, for instance, tend to walk like flagpoles. He was dressed, as he had been this morning, in his field uniform of khaki tunic, breeches, highly polished riding boots and topee. It was drab in its colour but somehow he gave it a dash of glamour, though we did not use that word in those days. He saluted me and Lady Westbrook and winked at the Nawab, with whom he seemed on intimate terms.

‘Are we all sorted out? Am I still riding with you, Bertie?’

‘Of course, old bean.’ The Nawab seemed eager to play the genial host. ‘But I thought you’d be riding down with Mala.’

‘Nothing ever escapes the gossips up here, does it?’

‘It’s food and drink to us,’ said Lady Westbrook. ‘Are you having another affair with her? The Ranee’s a man-eater,’ she explained to me. ‘Destroyed more men than any tiger.’

‘But not me.’ Major Farnol smiled, winked at the Nawab, then, as an afterthought, winked at me. ‘I’ve reformed, Viola. I’m positively monkish.’

‘Like those monks in The Decameron.’ But Lady Westbrook gave him an affectionate smile.

Then the station-master blew his whistle and the assistant station-master blew his and the engine-driver blew his; we were whipped aboard the train by a chorus of thin blasts. The train drew out past a packed mass of smiling faces and waving hands, the Europeans left behind standing in the front of the crowd, the Indians bringing up the rear. I had noticed on my journey up from Bombay and then from Delhi up to Simla that railroad stations in India are never empty, that even in the middle of the night there were always people standing, sitting or lying fast asleep on the platforms. They came there for company, for shelter, for some distraction from their poverty; but they always looked to me as if they were waiting to be asked aboard, to be given a ticket on a journey to anywhere but that spot where they waited so patiently and hopelessly. I sometimes wept at the hopelessness one found in India and I understand it has got no better, is even worse now than then.

We all settled down in the Nawab’s private car, which was far more luxuriously decorated and furnished than any Pullman car I had seen back home, even that of the President. The wives sat at one end, cramped together on two couches covered in red silk; three of them, the younger ones, kept their veils up across their faces, but the three older ones sat and watched us with bare-faced curiosity. I looked for some resentment in their stares, but there was either none or I was not sharp-eyed enough. The Nawab seemed oblivious of them, which, I suppose, is a good defence when you have six of them.

Though it was only 65 miles down to Kalka, the journey was going to take us at least five hours. The railroad track wound its way in a series of loops down through the hills, with never a stretch of straight track longer than a hundred yards; coming up, I had been struck by the number of tunnels we passed through and then had seen the numbers painted at the entrance to each one; the final number had been 103. The train went round its first long curve and I looked back through the window and saw the open wagons and the flat-cars at the tail. The elephants and horses stood swaying in the wagons, backs to the smoke from the locomotive blowing back over them. On the last flat-car, their backs also to the smoke, were the dozen soldiers who were our escort. That, I guessed, was the order of precedence, the British Tommy right back there behind the elephants and horses.

I turned back and looked at Major Farnol. The Nawab and Lady Westbrook had got up and moved to the front of the car where a bearer was serving them tea and biscuits. ‘Still nothing on Major Savanna?’

‘He’s disappeared completely.’

‘Are the telephone and telegraph wires still cut?’

‘I checked just before we got aboard. The wires are still dead. Captain Weyman is now worried about what has happened to the men he sent down the line.’ He looked out at the hillside dropping away like a cliff right beside us. The tops of the pines and cedars were just below us and it was as if we were riding on a rattling magic carpet above the forest. Monkeys swung along the tree-tops, keeping pace with us like urchins, and the children in the train hung out of the windows and screamed encouragement at them. ‘We have just two stops, at Solan Brewery and Bangu. Don’t get out, stay here in the carriage.’

‘Is that an order?’ I said with a smile.

‘Yes.’ But he didn’t return my smile.

We had been travelling for no more than half an hour, had gone perhaps no more than five or six miles, when the train abruptly began to slow, the wheels screeching on the rails and the cars battering each other with a loud jangling of iron buffers. I put out a hand to steady myself and it fell on Major Farnol’s knee opposite me. He put his hand on mine, pressed it, then rose quickly and went to the door that led out on to the rear platform. I saw that he had taken his pistol from its holster as he stepped out the door.

‘Damned trains!’ Lady Westbrook was on her second cup of tea; or rather it was on her. She wiped herself down where the liquid had spilled on her. ‘Never a journey without something going wrong!’

‘They are still better than making that dreadful journey up here by tonga, all those painful weeks by cart. You don’t really want the old days to come back, Viola.’ But the Nawab was not paying any real attention to her. He handed his cup to a servant, brushed past his wives, snapping something at them in Hindi that stopped their chattering in an instant and went out on to the rear platform to join Major Farnol.

I stood up to follow him, but felt Lady Westbrook’s hand on my knee. I was surprised at the strength of it; it was like a claw. ‘Stay here, m’dear. Leave it to the men.’

I sank back on my seat. ‘What’s going on?’

She let go of my knee, sat back, rattled her cup and saucer and handed them to the servant as he jumped forward. ‘I don’t know. But in these hills, when the unexpected happens, you learn it is better for women to stay out of the way.’

Then the Nawab came back, no longer genial, looking decidedly worried. ‘I’m afraid this is as far as we go. There’s a bally great landslide up ahead, completely blocking the line.’

End of extract from memoirs.

2

Farnol jumped down from the carriage, followed by Karim who had been riding on the rear platform. As they began to walk up towards the front of the train they were joined by the sergeant of the escort of soldiers. ‘Don’t look good, sir.’

They were walking on the cliff side of the railway line. The track curved round one of the many tight bends and they looked across at the tumble of rocks and earth and trees just ahead of the grunting, steaming engine. As they passed the Ranee’s private carriage, she came out on to its platform right above Farnol. He was surprised to see Baron von Albern, the German Consul-General, standing in the doorway behind her; he had not known her to be particularly friendly to the Baron. But he made no comment.

‘Are we going to be delayed long, Major?’

‘I don’t know, Your Highness. But from the look of it from here, I’ll be surprised if we get through at all.’

Other than the two private cars of the Ranee and the Nawab, all the carriages had box compartments. People were leaning out the windows, voluble and curious. Farnol, Karim and the sergeant walked on past them, careful not to miss their step on the rough permanent way and go plunging down the hillside into the trees below. Trees cloaked the steep hillside above the track and Farnol, on edge again, recognized the situation for an ideal ambush. He had instinctively chosen to walk along the outer edge of the permanent way, with the train itself as a barricade against any gunfire that might come from up there in the trees.

He stopped, said quietly, ‘Sergeant, go back and deploy your men along the other side of the train. Tell them to keep low, in against the bank. And see that no one gets out of the train.’

The sergeant looked surprised, but he was an old campaigner and he took off at once on the order, running back towards the rear of the train. Immediately above Farnol a voice said, ‘Something wrong?’

A man was hanging out the window of one of the compartments. He was hatless and his thin blond hair hung down in a fringe round his long-nosed, long-jawed face. He had the adroit eyes of the ambitious or the survivor, and Farnol wondered how acute his hearing was.

‘Nothing.’ He wanted no panic starting up amongst the passengers.

‘But I heard you tell the sergeant –’

Farnol stared up at the man. ‘You heard me tell him nothing, sir. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘Of course,’ the man said after a moment. But other heads were hanging out of windows close by and as Farnol walked on he saw the heads withdraw and he felt, if he did not hear, the murmurs inside the compartments.

The engine-driver and his fireman were standing at the front of the train with the conductor. Farnol introduced himself and the driver, a chee-chee with a plump face and a thick moustache, looking like a coal-dusted walrus, shook his head resignedly.

‘Never get past here in a month of Sundays, sir.’ The landslide was a sixty-foot-wide mound of rocks, earth and trees that covered the track and ran down to disappear into the trees below. ‘I don’t understand it, sir. There ain’t been any rain for a fortnight, that’s what usually causes the slides.’

‘Karim, go up to the top of the slide. Keep your eyes peeled.’

Karim caught the warning in Farnol’s voice, unslung his rifle and went clambering up the slope beside the landslide. Then the sergeant came back and with him was the Nawab.

‘My men are in position, sir. I tried to tell His Highness he oughta stay in the train –’ The sergeant was a 12-year man, his dislike of India and Indians of all ranks, but particularly princes, burned into his dark, wizened face.

‘If something’s going on, Clive, I think you can do with my help.’ The Nawab sounded less British, less an impostor. ‘My bodyguard is back there, six men with rifles.’

‘I’m hoping we shan’t need them.’

Then Karim came sliding down the slope. ‘Oh, I don’t like it, sahib. Some bugger has used dynamite up there –’

‘Righto,’ Farnol snapped, ‘everyone back behind the engine! Sergeant, get down and warn your men. Better get the Nawab’s men, too. Tell them to take as much cover as they can. And tell all the passengers to keep away from the windows on your side of the train.’

The sergeant went round the front of the engine and raced down the track below the trees. Farnol and the others remained on the outer edge of the track, the train crew all squatting down to make themselves smaller targets.

‘Is it an ambush?’ the Nawab said.

‘I don’t know, Bertie. It could be dacoits. I suppose Mala herself must be carrying a fortune in jewels with her. You too?’

‘One is expected to put on a show. I’m afraid I’ve brought the bally lot. The wives, y’know. They’re all looking forward to dazzling the English ladies. God knows how much the blighters would get if they did rob us. A couple of million pounds’ worth at least.’

‘I can’t understand why they haven’t already put in an appearance, or fired on us.’ Farnol looked around him, puzzled. ‘At least one shot, just to let us know they’re here.’

There was no sound but the hissing of steam from the engine’s boiler. A chill breeze blew up the narrow tree-shrouded valley below them; an eagle hung in the air like an ominous leaf; clouds seemed to form out of nothing to cover the sun and turn the green pines black. Then Farnol caught a glimpse of movement and round the next bend up ahead came a small flat-bed trolley-car, two men working the seesaw lever that propelled it and a third man sitting on the front of the trolley. The two men suddenly stopped pumping as soon as they saw the landslide and the trolley slid to a stop just short of it.

‘Stay here!’

Farnol left the Nawab and the others still sheltered beside the engine and scrambled across the slide, expecting a bullet at any moment to hit him or slap into the dirt beside him. Twice he missed his footing and he had to grab at a fallen tree as the earth slipped away beneath him; once he just managed to jump ahead as the tree he had grabbed also slid down; out of the corner of his eye he saw it plunge over the edge and a moment later heard it crash into the trees below. He had just reached the far side of the slide when there was a rumble behind him. He turned to see the rocks and earth and trees slipping away, taking a section of the track with it. The rumbling deepened, then faded; dust rose up in a brown cloud and when it cleared there was a wide gap in the ledge that carried the railway line. It was going to take a month of Sundays, as the driver had said, before any train would be running on this part of the track again.

The three men on the trolley were Post and Telegraph workers. Two of them were Indians, the two who had been doing the hard work on the lever handles, and the other was a chee-chee, one who might have passed for European but for his slightly bluish gums and the blue marks in his finger-nails. He was grey-haired and in his fifties, his gullied face a network of lines and pockmarks.

‘No, sir, we didn’t see no soldiers down the line. Nobody. We been looking for breaks in the telegraph line, I dunno nothing about the telephone wires. We found four breaks between here and Solan, sir, cut by snips. I don’t like the looks of it. These buggers here wanted to go home right away.’ He nodded to the two Indians standing in the background; then he winked at Farnol, man to man, us whites sticking together. ‘You know what they’re like soon’s they get a sniff of trouble.’

Who can blame them? thought Farnol; but he said, ‘Gibson, I want you to go back to Solan, get on the telegraph and ask the Railway Superintendent at Kalka to send up another train immediately. You can leave your two fellows here and I’ll send two soldiers with you. It’s all downhill so you should make pretty quick time.’

The sergeant brought up two soldiers, who cautiously made their way across the slide above the gap. Farnol gave them instructions; they looked at him dubiously but scrambled aboard the trolley. They took up their positions on the front of the trolley, their rifles at the ready, and Gibson got up behind them.

‘It could be midnight before they get a train up here, sir.’

‘Just so long as they get here. I may have to take this train back up the line, but I’ll leave someone here to meet the Kalka train. Good luck.’

The two soldiers looked sourly over their shoulders at him when he said that, but Farnol had given the trolley a push and it went rolling down the track, gathering speed on the slight decline that led to the next bend. It disappeared round the bend and Farnol stood for a moment wondering why the dacoits, or whoever had caused the landslide, still had not shot at him and the train. He felt that eyes were watching him, but there was no way of guessing how close the watchers were. He clambered up the slope into the trees above the slide and worked his way across through the thick forest. He was stiff with tension, his breath hissing as he forgot to breathe steadily in the high thin air; for a moment he seemed to have lost all the animal skills that had been natural to him for so long. He was no stranger to danger, but he had never before been responsible for a train-load of civilian men, women and children. He watched every tree as if it hid an assassin, but no one jumped out at him with gun or knife and at last he slid down on to the railway line.

‘Driver, could you reverse the train as far back as Simla?’

‘Not with all these carriages and wagons, sir. If they was empty, yes, but not with all them elephants and horses. It’s a pretty heavy load for an old engine like this one.’

Farnol nodded, glancing up at the ancient engine that looked as if it had had trouble getting the train this far downhill. Then the Nawab said, ‘There’s the trolley, across there on that far bend. I say, they’re going fast!’

Farnol looked beyond the near bend round which the trolley had disappeared a few minutes ago, saw it now in view on a far shoulder of the mountain that towered above the railway line. The foreman was working the driving lever up and down as fast as he could, speeding the trolley along, as if once he was out of range of Farnol he was as determined as the soldiers with him to get out of the danger zone as soon as possible. The trolley was a hundred yards short of the far bend when the foreman fell forward over the see-sawing arm of the lever. It swung up, lifting him sideways, and he toppled off the trolley and went hurtling down the sheer cliff-face below the track. One of the soldiers straightened up, then he, too, fell off the trolley, hit the permanent way and rolled over the edge of the cliff and followed the foreman down into the green surf of trees far below. The other soldier just lay back as if going to sleep and as the sound of the three rifle shots reached the watchers beside the engine, the trolley disappeared round the far bend, its see-sawing driving lever still going up and down in a stiff-armed farewell.

Farnol acted at once. ‘Back into the train! Get us back as far as you can, driver! Hop to it!’

But the driver couldn’t budge the old engine. It gasped and wheezed and its wheels spun with a thin screech on the rails; but none of the carriages or wagons behind it moved even a yard.

‘Ain’t no use, sir. She’ll just bust her boiler.’

Farnol, still standing beside the track, looked at the Nawab. ‘I’m afraid all your animals have to come off, Bertie. Mala’s too. Will you organize it while I tell the passengers what’s happening? I’m going to have to send them all back up to Simla. They’ll be safer there than down here.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think I’ll try to get down to Kalka somehow. I have to get on the telegraph to Delhi. Now hop to it, will you?’

The Nawab went hurrying down the train and Farnol followed him, stopping beside each carriage and telling the curious passengers what he intended doing. They had heard the echoes of the shots and most of the faces that hung out of the windows and doors were frightened and puzzled. One didn’t expect this sort of thing in the hills south of Simla, this wasn’t the Khyber Pass or the North-West Frontier.

There was also chagrin and disappointment. ‘But we may never get to the Durbar in time! We can’t possibly go back up to Simla!’ She was a formidable woman who filled a window of her own, like an oversized portrait in a too-small frame. ‘We shall wait here till they send up another train!’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, madam. I can’t be responsible for the lives of all of you. I’ll have a man stay here and bring a message up to Simla when a relief train arrives.’

But he had no faith that that would happen. When the Durbar Train did not arrive down in Kalka on time there would be worried questions, especially since it was known that the telephone and telegraph lines had been cut. He could imagine the argument and indecision that would occur as to whether another train should be risked.

He left the woman and went on down the train.

‘I’m not going back up to Simla,’ said the Ranee. ‘Have them take my elephants and horses and coach down to the cart road down there. I’ll go down to Kalka by road.’

‘Mala, you can’t –’

But one of her servants was already helping her down. ‘Clive, don’t tell me what I cannot do – as I told you before, I’m not one of your little base wallah wives. Coming, Baron?’

‘Of course.’ The Baron, heavily-built and one-armed, also had to be helped down to the ground.

Then the Nawab came back. ‘Shouldn’t be long. I’m having my chaps take everything down to the cart road – Hello, Mala old girl. Where are you going?’

‘She’s going down to Kalka by road, so she says.’

‘I say, what a topping idea! Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Bertie, for God’s sake – ! It’ll take four or five days at least, those blighters could take pot-shots at you all the way –’

‘Perhaps, old chap. But what’s the alternative? Leave everything here and have them pick my chaps off one by one and then steal the lot? What sort of show would I be able to put on down at the Durbar then?’

But Farnol saw behind the smile, knew that Bertie was concerned for something more than his vanity, his image as a prince in the parade of princes. He looked to the rear of the train, saw the first of the elephants already being led back between the railway tracks to the path that led down to the narrow road cutting through the trees several hundred feet below.

‘All right, get everything down there. See that your guards have their rifles loaded, keep two of them on the alert all the time. I’m coming with you.’

‘I hoped you’d say that,’ said the Ranee right behind him.

‘Be jolly glad to have you,’ said the Nawab.

‘You’ll be excellent company, Major,’ said the Baron.

Farnol looked at the three of them, suddenly uneasy again; but this time he was not looking for some distant rifleman to take a shot at him. He was surrounded by hospitable smiles, but all at once he trusted none of them. Especially the Ranee’s, the widest smile of all.

‘Get everything down to the road, Bertie. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve got the train under way.’

But his arguments were not over yet. Bridie O’Brady and Lady Westbrook were on the platform of the Nawab’s carriage and as soon as Farnol told them what was happening they said they would be travelling down to Kalka by road.

‘Miss O’Brady and I can ride in the Ranee’s coach. For twenty years I travelled up and down this road by tonga – I know every bump and dip in it. We’ll go down in style, Miss O’Brady, pretending we’re princesses. We may even throw a penny or two to the peasants –’

‘Lady Westbrook –’

‘No more discussion, Clive. Just see that my bearer gets my things off the train. What is going on, anyway?’

Farnol was unaccustomed to arguing with women. He came of a long line of Farnol men who looked upon women as one of God’s more pleasant afterthoughts, like rainbows and other trivia of nature. His own father had never quite accepted Queen Victoria as his sovereign and had been surprised the Empire had survived under her. He himself had progressed to the extent that he allowed women equal rights in the bedroom; at least in a bedroom there was no other man, one’s true peer, to see him occasionally playing second fiddle. In public he took it for granted that a woman knew her proper place.

‘Viola, there are dacoits covering the railway line and the road. If you persist in going down that road, you could be shot. You, too, Miss O’Brady. I’m ordering you both to get back on the train.’

Lady Westbrook sniffed, looked at Bridie. ‘Do you allow the men in America to talk to you like that?’

‘No,’ said Bridie. ‘I’m sorry, Major Farnol. I’m accompanying Lady Westbrook.’

‘Damn!’ said Farnol and didn’t apologize.

Twenty minutes later the wagons and flat-cars were empty. The elephants and horses were down on the road, the elephants saddled with their howdahs; half a dozen of the Ranee’s men were struggling with her coach as they eased it down the steep path to the road. There had still been no more shots and Farnol had the feeling he was working in a vice that would close as soon as the train had disappeared. But he knew he had to stay with the party going down by road, more for his own reasons than for theirs. Somehow he had to get on the telegraph to Colonel Lathrop. He was certain that Lathrop would take heed of his warning of a plot against the King’s life.

He spoke to the sergeant of the escort. ‘When you get back to Simla tell Captain Weyman I suggest he has everyone on twenty-four-hour stand-by. I’ll have the telegraph line repaired as soon as possible.’

‘You think they’ll try coming up to Simla, sir?’

‘I doubt it. This isn’t some sort of uprising, sergeant – we’d have heard about it before this if anything had been stewing. I think they are just dacoits and nothing more.’

‘Puzzles me why they haven’t opened up on us. Them buggers usually don’t waste no time.’

‘It puzzles me, too, sergeant.’

‘You think they’re waiting to pop them off down there?’ The sergeant nodded down at the small caravan gathering on the road below. ‘Maybe I’d better give you some of my blokes, sir –’

‘No, they’re needed to guard the train, just in case. Hop aboard, sergeant, there’s the whistle.’

The train creaked its iron joints, the wheels gave faint squeals, then it started to ease slowly backwards up the slight incline. Farnol stood beside the track, nodding to the heads hanging out of the windows as they went by above him. The stout woman would have fallen out of her window if she could have squeezed through; she could see the social climax of her life disappearing as the train took her backwards away from it, all the unwritten letters to her less fortunate friends in England never to be written at all; her tirade at Farnol drifted back, harder on the ear than the clang and screech of the iron wheels. Two little girls hung out of a window crying, deprived of the biggest picnic they would ever have seen. Finally the engine went past, puffing and grunting and wheezing like an old bull elephant coaxed out of retirement to push its way through a teak forest; the conductor stood on the step, ready to drop off and take cover further up the line where he could hide and wait for the arrival of the relief train, if and when it came. The engine went by, Farnol waved to the driver, then turned to walk down the path to the road. And stopped.

On the other side of the line, between the tracks and the steeply rising hillside, stood a man and a woman, two suitcases beside them.

3

‘Awfully sorry to trouble you, Major.’ It was the long-nosed, long-jawed man who had spoken to Farnol earlier. He had put on a deer-stalker cap and it only seemed to accentuate the long thinness of his face. ‘My name is Monday. This lady is my wife.’

She was pretty in a vague sort of way, as if her looks came and went with shifts of light. She was dressed in a brown travelling suit and brown hat and she reminded Farnol of a good-looking field mouse. She smiled sweetly.

‘We’re coming with you, Major. I’m sure you’ll be able to find room for us.’

All at once Farnol suspected she might be a field mouse with very sharp teeth. ‘Sir, just who are you that you think you can invite yourself to travel with me?’

‘Please don’t misunderstand me, sir. We are not forcing ourselves on you.’ For the first time Farnol noticed that the man had a slight accent. ‘Perhaps we should not have got off the train without requesting your permission. But here we are and I trust you will not leave us here.’

‘I may do just that, sir. You still haven’t told me who you are.’

‘I am the Asian representative for Krupps.’ Both he and his wife stood very still, as if the name Krupp sounded like the single note of a leper’s clapper bell even in their own ears.

‘You have an English name, or so it sounds.’

‘My grandfather was English. My wife and I are Hungarian. But we always stand for God Save The King.’

‘Bully for you,’ said Farnol and started walking down the path towards the road. When he stopped and looked back the Mondays were still standing on the far side of the railway line, their suitcases still on the ground. ‘Righto, you’d better follow me. But I warn you – I shan’t be responsible for you.’

‘You are a sweet man.’ Magda Monday followed Farnol down the path, leaving her husband to struggle with the two suitcases. ‘So gallant.’

Farnol just bowed his head, then looked up past her at her husband whose arms looked as if they were being pulled out of their sockets by the weight of the suitcases he carried. ‘Cannonballs, Mr Monday?’

Monday managed a Hungarian smile, which can be read a dozen ways. ‘We shall enjoy the Major’s company, my dear. The English sense of humour is famous.’

Mrs Monday put her hand out for Farnol to help her down a steep part of the path; she went past him on a wave of perfume that suggested she might have upset a bottle of it all over herself before getting off the train. He noticed that the buttons of her brown jacket were undone; her bodice was low-cut, exposing more bosom than one expected to see in India in the daytime. She saw the direction of his gaze and looked directly at him, turning her body slightly towards him. He knew a whore when she smiled at him.

‘Englishmen never treat their women with any sense of humour, do they, Major?’

‘Only when we bury them, madam. Our graveyards are full of husbands’ wit.’

Bridie O’Brady, Lady Westbrook, the Ranee of Serog and now this one: Farnol could feel his latent misogynism rising sourly within him. He led the way down to the road, getting well ahead of them, and walked up to Baron von Albern, who stood beside the Ranee as they waited for horses to be hitched to the Ranee’s coach. The other horses were being saddled; final adjustments were being made to the howdahs on the elephants’ backs. None of the servants looked enthusiastic about the journey ahead and kept glancing over their shoulders up at the surrounding hills.

‘Herr Baron, those people coming down the path are Hungarians – the gentleman says he is a representative of Krupps. Do you know anything about him?’

‘Not much, Major.’ The Consul-General was straightforward, which may have explained why he had never risen to being an ambassador. ‘They only arrived two days ago. They stayed at the Hotel Cecil. Herr Monday paid a courtesy call on me.’

‘Was he intending to sell arms to anyone in Simla?’

‘I couldn’t say. He told me nothing about his business.’

Then the Mondays came down on to the road. Zoltan Monday dropped the suitcases and began bending his arms as if he were trying to push them back into their sockets. Bridie and the others looked at the pair curiously, then all looked at Farnol. Curtly he explained who the newcomers were, saw the Ranee look at them with sharp interest when he mentioned the name Krupp. The Nawab, standing in front of his six wives, gave a bright smile of welcome to Madame Monday, but ignored her husband. Lady Westbrook sniffed loudly and Bridie made mental notes for her as-yet-unthought-of memoirs.

‘I am delighted to meet you all,’ said Magda, who would have introduced herself in the same way to every circle of Hell. At fifteen she had walked the Fisherman’s Bastion above Budapest looking for men; at twenty she had found Zoltan in the chandeliered lobby of the Astoria Hotel. She had trained herself for rebuffs as a boxer builds the muscles of his midriff to absorb punches. ‘I’m sure we shall have a very good journey together.’

‘It won’t be for want of your trying.’ The Ranee had already decided there were too many women in her caravan; she also recognized a possible mischief-maker. She got up into her coach. ‘Get in, Viola. You, too, Miss O’Brady.’

‘Thank you, Your Highness, but if I may I’d like to ride one of your horses with Major Farnol.’

‘As you wish.’ The Ranee, not trained for rebuffs, made no attempt to sound gracious. She turned her head away and looked down at the Hungarian woman. ‘Perhaps you had better ride with us, Madame Monday.’

‘Monday?’ Lady Westbrook had donned her two hats again and looked like a war-torn pagoda. She looked Magda up and down as the latter got into the coach and sat opposite her. She decided that Magda was riff-raff. ‘Is that your name or the day you are available?’

Magda’s smile had the bright shine of a razor turned to the sun. ‘I have just been complimenting the Major on the English sense of humour.’ She moved sideways on the seat to make room for the bulk of the Baron. ‘We appear to have taken sides, Herr Baron. You and I against the British Empire.’

The Baron put on his glasses, looked across at the ladies of the Empire. ‘I should never take sides against such a formidable force.’

The procession got under way. Karim and two of the Nawab’s armed men rode up front on horses, with Farnol, Bridie and the Nawab immediately behind them. Then came the Ranee’s coach, the twelve elephants, their howdahs stuffed with the Nawab’s wives and all the luggage, and finally the rest of the horses ridden by Zoltan Monday and the Ranee’s and the Nawab’s escorts. All over India similar caravans were making their way towards the Great Durbar, but none of them had been forced to make their march in the way this one had been.

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