Terror in the Sun Read online

  Author’s Note

  On New Year’s Day 1833 William Sleeman set out on an official tour of his territories, carried in a palanquin preceded by an elephant and escorted, as usual, by Sepoys and Cavalry,

  With him was Amelie, his wife, and on the sixth day out from Saugor she was seized with labour pains.

  They pitched camp in a grove of lime and pepper trees, a place that for generations had been notorious as a bele – a haunt of Thugs.

  There the Sleemans’ son was born.

  Several years later William Sleeman was appointed British Resident at Lucknow. One of the heroes of the British Administration in India, he died in 1856, a Major General,

  British Resident at the Court of Oudh, he was recommended for a Knighthood, which was awarded posthumously.

  By 1841 Thuggee had been virtually exterminated, although the Office of Superintendent survived until 1904.

  Chapter ONE ~ 1832

  “Is it your pleasure, Sahib Major, that the train be permitted to leave?”

  The Indian guard spoke with respect.

  At the same time as he spoke, he glanced over his shoulder at the turmoil that was taking place on the platform.

  A scene of confusion had heralded the arrival of the train, which, just introduced into India, was thought to be a terrifying fire breathing dragon.

  Indians in dhotis, saris, swathed torn rags and loincloths were all in a state of noisy frenzy.

  Hawkers shouting in hollow voices were peeping through the windows of the packed carriages with pleading eyes, offering chapattis, coloured sweetmeats and orange and crimson drinks.

  Priests in yellow robes, soldiers in scarlet uniforms and porters with huge loads hustled against one another.

  There were the inevitable passionate goodbyes and shouted instructions to those who were leaving from those who believed that they were risking their lives in travelling in this dangerous monster.

  But Major Ian Hadleigh was watching a number of men who were clustered together behind a pile of baggage and he was certain that they were there for no other reason than to cause trouble.

  Even as the guard moved away from his side, unfurling his red flag as he did so, pandemonium broke out.

  The Indians began to rush forward, shouting and screaming and waving their arms or sticks. Almost like magic a number of soldiers appeared with muskets, moving quickly into place to hold back the threatening throng.

  There were few of them compared to the rioters who, intent on making a nuisance of themselves, were jumping over or pushing to one side the families who, not travelling on this particular train, were sitting or sleeping on the platform beside their cherished possessions, which consisted mostly of fragile parcels tied up with string. Each group seemed to contain numerous children besides, inevitably, a goat or two.

  The onslaught from behind took them by surprise and they were rolling over, screaming as they did so, the shrieks of their children and bleating of their animals adding to the general tumult.

  Chapattis flew in every direction, the heavy glasses containing the coloured drinks were smashed, and a goat got loose and rushed down the platform with its owner in hot pursuit.

  Major Ian Hadleigh thought with relief that the soldiers would be able to control everything once the train had left and he moved without hurrying towards his own compartment where he could see his servant standing by the open door awaiting him.

  The wheels were beginning to turn and the steam and the hiss of the engine transcended every other noise, while the mere size and bulk of the British-manufactured locomotive seemed to dwarf everything else.

  Then, just as he had almost reached his carriage, to Major Hadleighs surprise, the next door was flung open and a woman in white stepped out onto the platform.

  He saw immediately, with the quickness of a man who is used to the unexpected, that she was intending to rescue a baby who, knocked over by the rioters, was lying unattended on the platform and in imminent danger of being trodden underfoot.

  Small though the baby was, little more than a bundle of rags, it was screaming ferociously.

  One second before her outstretched arms could pick it up, Major Hadleigh swung the woman round and pushed her back into her carriage.

  By this time the train was moving forwards with a steadily increasing pace and, since there was no time to reach his own carriage, he swung himself in after her, closing the door behind him.

  He looked back to see a forest of shaking fists and hear the yells of the rioters, which sounded very like a pack of jackals deprived of their prey.

  As the wheels quickened and the Station platform was left behind, Major Hadleigh turned to look at the woman he had unceremoniously propelled back into her carriage.

  To his surprise she was young and exceptionally pretty.

  She had discarded her hat and her dark hair curled about a white forehead while her eyes, large, dark and flecked with gold, regarded him angrily.

  “Thanks to your interference,” she said sharply, “that baby will doubtless be killed!”

  “What are you doing here and who are you?” he asked her bluntly.

  He sat down as he spoke and looked round him with an incredulous air as if he had expected to find that there was someone else accompanying her in the carriage.

  He saw, however, that it was empty and, turning to look again at the woman and before she could answer his first question he asked,

  “Who put you on this train? They had no to right to do so.”

  “I should have thought that anyone could travel on a train as long as they can afford the ticket.”

  “Not on this particular train, which is going to Saugor.”

  “Yes, I know and that is where I wish to go.”

  “To Saugor?”

  The girl, for she was little more, drew herself up.

  “I suppose,” she enquired after a moment, “that you have some authority to question me?”

  “I have every authority.” Major Hadleigh said firmly. “I gave orders that no Europeans were to travel to Saugor, which is at the moment a forbidden area.”

  “Why?”

  The question seemed to demand an answer, but he replied somewhat evasively,

  “Official reasons of administration, but you have not answered my question.”

  He guessed, as he spoke, that she had no intention of doing so and in a more restrained tone he said,

  “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. I am Ian Hadleigh and, as you can no doubt see from my uniform, I am in the Bengal Lancers, but at this moment on special duties in this area.”

  Major Hadleigh finished speaking and waited for a reply.

  As he did so, he thought that the girl he was talking to was far too pretty and too young to be travelling alone in any part of India and certainly not this particular district at this sensitive moment.

  There was a studied pause as if she resented having to give him any information. Then, as if she thought that there was no point in being difficult, she stated with obvious reluctance,

  “My name is Brucena Nairn.”

  “And you are travelling to Saugor?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I am staying with friends.”

  “I am not being unnecessarily curious,” Major Hadleigh said, “but I would like to know their names.”

  Again he had the feeling that she would like to defy him and tell him to mind his own business.

  She was still angry, which he could see in her eyes that he thought now were very expressive and seemed, although they were dark, somehow to be filled with the sunshine that in a few hours would turn the plains outside into an inferno of dry heat.

  “I am staying,” she answered him at
length in a low musical voice, “with Captain and Mrs. Sleeman.”

  Major Hadleigh stared at her incredulously.

  “With the Sleemans?” he questioned. “Is that possible?”

  “Does it sound to you so very improbable?” Brucena Nairn enquired.

  “I cannot believe that William Sleeman could be expecting a guest like you without telling me of her arrival and making proper arrangements for her reception.”

  Brucena Nairn shrugged her shoulders.

  “If that is what you think, there is no reason for me to say anything more.”

  Her small chin went up defiantly and she deliberately stared out the window as though the conversation was at an end.

  Almost in spite of himself, Ian Hadleigh found himself smiling.

  There was, he thought, something amusing in the antagonism of this small creature who had no right to be on the train let alone arguing with him about it.

  He now thought it wise to be conciliatory.

  “I must apologise, Miss Nairn,” he began, “but quite frankly you have taken me by surprise. For the last week Saugor has been out of bounds to all Europeans. As you saw just now at the Station, there has been a certain amount of trouble and, if you had been left behind, you might have found yourself in a very unpleasant situation.”

  “What are they rioting about?” Brucena Nairn enquired.

  “There is usually trouble at this time of the year,” Major Hadleigh replied evasively. “But I still cannot understand why Captain Sleeman did not tell me that he was expecting you.”

  As he spoke, he saw to his surprise a faint colour come into the cheeks of the girl opposite him and for a moment her eyes flickered.

  “He and Mrs. Sleeman really are expecting you?” he questioned in a different tone.

  There was a slight pause before Brucena Nairn replied in a low voice,

  “I – hope so.”

  “You hope so,” Major Hadleigh repeated. “I should be grateful if you would explain to me exactly what has happened and why you are here.”

  “There is no reason – ” Brucena started.

  Then her eyes met Major Hadleigh’s and almost against her will she found herself capitulating.

  There was something about him, she thought, that was authoritative and she resented it and yet at the same time she did not feel that she could go on defying him,

  “It is like this,” she said after a moment, “Captain Sleeman is my cousin.”

  “So he suggested that you should come and stay with him in India?” Major Hadleigh interposed, as if he was beginning to understand what had happened.

  “N-not – exactly.”

  The words were spoken hesitantly and he looked at Brucena Nairn sharply before he asked,

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “His wife, Mrs. Sleeman, wrote to me asking if I would find her a – child’s Nanny. She is – expecting a – baby next year.”

  There was a faint colour in Brucena’s cheeks, as if she was embarrassed to speak of anything so intimate and Major Hadleigh said quickly,

  “Yes, yes. I am aware of that.”

  “I tried everywhere to find a respectable woman who would go to India, but they all refused.”

  As she spoke, Brucena was thinking that it had been an impossible task to convince the Scottish girls in Invernessshire that they would find India a desirable place to work in.

  It was not only they who were reluctant but also their mothers.

  “I’m no havin’ my lassie consortin’ with the heathens,” they said over and over again. “She’ll stay right here, where I can keep my eye on her.”

  “But you must see that it would be quite an adventure as well as being an education,” Brucena had pleaded, only to be answered by one straight-backed Scot,

  “My bairn is no havin’ that sort of adventure at her tender age. If it sounds so attractive to you, Miss Brucena, why do you not go yoursel?”

  It was that answer that had put the idea into Brucena’s head in the first place.

  At the time she had just laughed, but later, when her task of finding a Nanny for Cousin Amelie had proved more and more impossible, she had begun to feel as if India beckoned her and she would be foolish to refuse the invitation.

  She had not been happy at home ever since she had been old enough to realise that she was a desperate disappointment to her father because he had desperately wanted a son.

  General Nairn had only two interests in life, his Regiment and the continuation of the Nairn family.

  His greatest joy was opening the books that he could follow the history of the Nairns in all down the ages and prove that, if nothing else, they were ferocious fighters.

  Brucena used to think that ever since he was a boy himself he had dreamt of the day when he would have one or more sons by his side to fight with him and to add trophies of the wars that they took part in to those that already hung on the walls of Nairn Castle.

  ‘I am a failure to Papa,’ she had told herself before she was nine years old.

  In the years that followed she began to realise how much he resented her because she had disappointed his greatest ambition by being a girl instead of a boy.

  If she had not been reminded of it in other ways, she could remember it whenever she heard her name.

  ‘Bruce’ was a family name of the Nairns and her father had had her christened ‘Brucena’, almost as if he defied the Gods who had served him a scurvy trick in not providing the son he so ardently desired.

  Then two years ago when her mother had died, her father, with almost indecent haste, had seized the opportunity to marry again.

  He had chosen a young woman only three years older than his own daughter, but who was very different in appearance and might have been described as ‘good breeding stock’.

  Sturdy and heavily built with no pretensions to good looks, Jean had been proud and excited to marry the owner of Nairn Castle, but she had resented her stepdaughter’s appearance from the first moment she had seen her.

  It was inevitable that Brucena’s beauty and her attractiveness to men would not endear her to any stepmother, least of all to one who was so young.

  The tension that had always existed between her and her father was accentuated, quickly and violently, where his new wife was concerned.

  And when six months ago Jean had given birth to the much longed-for son, Brucena had found her position in The Castle untenable.

  She was found fault with frequently by her father, she tried to ignore the hatred in her stepmother’s eyes and she was sure that, once the pampered adored heir could see and think, he would hate her too.

  ‘I must get away,’ she had thought not once but a thousand times, but she had no idea where she could go.

  Her Nairn relations not only did not want her but would feel uncomfortable if they offered her a home without being asked to do so by the General.

  Although Brucena had never broached the subject to him, she thought that her father’s pride would never allow him either to ask for or accept favours from his relatives, most of whom he found boring and seldom invited to The Castle.

  All that Brucena possessed of her own was three hundred pounds, which had been left her as a legacy by her grandmother and was paid to her every year in January.

  She had been instructed not to spend it and she knew that her father thought that it would constitute part of her dowry on her marriage and would therefore save him from providing as much as he might otherwise have been obliged to otherwise.

  Now she knew that because it was her own it was a Godsend and she could pay her own fare to India.

  She debated in her mind for a long time whether she should tell her father what she intended to do and then decided against it.

  She had the feeling that, although he disliked her, he rather enjoyed having someone to quarrel with and to scold.

  She was there and when things displeased him he could vent his wrath on her in a manner that he would have hesitate
d to use with anyone else.

  Suddenly it seemed to Brucena as if everything fell into place as a plan came to her mind and she really had little difficulty in putting it into operation.

  A girl who had been her one friend after she had grown up invited her to accompany her and her parents to Edinburgh.

  “Papa and Mama are going to be very busy,” she had said to Brucena, “because Papa has to receive all the grand people who are coming from the South for an inspection of the troops. As they thought I would find it lonely, they have suggested that I ask you to come with me. We can look in the shops and we might even be asked to a ball. Anyway it would be fun to be together.”

  “Great fun,” Brucena agreed readily.

  She thought that her father would make difficulties about her going to Edinburgh, but to her surprise he said that he thought it was a good idea as long as she was not away for long.

  He made this condition, she thought, merely because he in fact begrudged her any amusement, although not so violently as he would have done a year ago before he had had an heir, a son to carry on his name.

  Brucena was certain when she left, with only perfunctory goodbyes from her father and her stepmother that they were really glad to be rid of her for a little while.

  That, she thought, exonerated her conscience from any feeling of guilt about what she was to do.

  She stayed in Edinburgh for a week, spending her time shopping surreptitiously for the things she thought she would need in India.

  She was intelligent enough not to go to a new country before learning something about it, but it had been hard to find books at home that told her anything she wanted to know.

  There was, however, plenty of information about India in the bookshops in Edinburgh and she soon accumulated quite a small library, which she knew she would have time to read over and over again on the voyage.

  She told her friends in Edinburgh that she had to return home as her father was expecting her and, when they reluctantly said ‘goodbye’ to her, she took a train to London.

  This, she thought as she travelled South, was where the real adventure started.

  Strangely enough, Brucena was quite confident that she could look after herself and that she would reach India in safety.