Terror in the Sun Read online

  Mrs. Sleeman had sent her full instructions as to how the Nanny, when she found one, was to be sent out.

  When Brucena had read the closely worded pages inscribed in Cousin Amelie’s elegant writing, she thought with a smile that it was rather like despatching a valuable parcel that must not be damaged on the voyage.

  She learnt that the P. & O. Line could provide for everything and a chaperone for the young woman would be found amongst the passengers who would be travelling Second Class.

  Cousin Amelie had written,

  “There will be Missionaries or Christian women of some organisation or another traveling to Bombay, but, although I am sure that they would not accept money for their services, which they would look upon as an act of charity, you must, of course, provide the woman you are sending with an adequate present to recompense them for their kindness.”

  In the P. & O. office Brucena had rather a different story to tell.

  “I have to journey to India to stay with relatives,” she said, “but unfortunately the lady who was to chaperone me has been taken ill and I am wondering if you could find anyone who would be kind enough to look after me on the voyage?”

  The Official stared at Brucena’s pretty face and thought to himself that a chaperone would certainly be needed for such an attractive girl.

  There were always Officers returning from leave and dealing with shipboard romances was what every Purser found to be one of his less arduous duties.

  Sometimes, however, they could be traumatic when the passengers were cooped up for so long with one another and there was no chance of getting away.

  He had, however, as Mrs. Sleeman had forecast, been only too willing to oblige.

  “I think I have exactly the lady you need, Miss Nairn,” he said. “Canon Grant and his wife are returning to Bombay and I am certain that Mrs. Grant would be only too willing to oblige, when I explain the circumstances to her.”

  “It would be very kind of you to do so,” Brucena smiled.

  She had known by the expression on the Official’s face that he would leave no stone unturned to help her.

  Mrs. Grant and her husband had, for that matter, proved a worthy but extremely dull couple. Officially they had provided Brucena with an umbrella of respectability, but they had not interfered with her so she was able to spend a great deal of time reading.

  She also enjoyed the sports on board ship and in the evening found herself the centre of attraction amongst the men who wished to dance with her much to the disgust of other young women aboard.

  It had in fact been the first time in her life when she had felt free without being continually found fault with as she had been at home.

  It was a joy to be able to express an opinion without being slapped down and a greater joy than she could ever put into words was to know that, whatever her father felt about her deceiving him, he could do nothing about it.

  She had spent what seemed to her an astronomical amount of money on her fare and her clothes, but she still had some left.

  Now that she had taken the plunge and had left home, she knew in her heart that she would never go back and, if the Sleemans did not want her, she would find somewhere else to work.

  She had cabled them before the ship sailed, saying,

  “Have found person you require. Details follow.

  Love, Brucena.”

  She deliberately did not state the date of her arrival or explain that she herself was coming instead of the Nanny who Cousin Amelie had asked for.

  This was only a precaution because she felt that perhaps they would not want her and would take steps to send her home when she reached Bombay.

  ‘They will think,’ she told herself, ‘that the Nanny is coming in a month or so and that the letter, which I have no intention of writing, will explain who she is and why I think her suitable.’

  She thought it over and knew that when she arrived, ready to do anything that was required of her, the Sleemans would find it extremely difficult to make her go home.

  ‘At least they will have to keep me for a little time,’ Brucena argued with herself.

  At the same time, in spite of her reassurance to herself that she would be a far better Nanny than any raw Scots girl, she could not help feeling that she was rather imposing herself on people who might not want her.

  Cousin William had always been very pleasant to her.

  She remembered that as a child, when he had come to stay at The Castle, she had thought him slightly awe-inspiring because he was so clever.

  Auburn-haired, blue-eyed and with a fine large forehead, she had learnt on his second visit several years later that he spoke Arabic, Persian and Urdu.

  He was Cornish, as her mother had been, and their families had been neighbours for centuries.

  Because of his intelligence he had in his thirties been seconded from his Regiment to Civil Administration and General Nairn had been impressed by the fact that he had become a Magistrate and a District Officer in Central India much earlier than most other men of his age.

  It was three years ago in 1830 that a letter from Captain Sleeman to the General brought the news that he had been appointed by the new Governor General, Lord William Bentinck, to a very important position.

  “He is the right man for the job,” the General had thundered as he read the letter at breakfast.

  “What is the job, Papa?” Brucena enquired.

  “His title is Superintendent for the Suppression of Thuggee,” the General replied, “but you would not understand about that.”

  He spoke disparagingly not only as a man who thinks that a woman’s intellect does not extend beyond the kitchen or the nursery but also because he disliked Brucena’s curiosity, which made her ask him questions that he would have welcomed from a boy rather than a girl.

  “I have read about the Thugs, Papa,” Brucena had replied, “They are a Secret Society who worship the Hindu God Kali and believe it is their sacred right to strangle people.”

  “You really should not know about such things,” the General said disagreeably, “but William will soon have that abomination under control.”

  “How will he do it?” Brucena enquired.

  “He has been given fifty mounted irregulars and forty Sepoy infantrymen,” the General snapped. “It should be enough. It is a job I would have liked to do myself when I was younger.”

  There were a hundred questions that Brucena had wanted to ask, but her father had walked from the room taking William Sleeman’s letter with him and she knew that it would be hopeless to even try.

  Instead she tried to find out everything she could about Thuggee, but she had not been very successful and even in Edinburgh the books she could buy told her very little more than she knew already,

  Now, as Major Hadleigh sat regarding her with what she thought was a suspicious look in his eyes, she said,

  “My cousin asked me to send his wife a Nanny, but, as I could not find the right sort of person they required, I – came myself.

  Major Hadleigh smiled.

  “Without giving them the chance of rejecting you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I am beginning to understand. But surely you did not make the voyage from England without having somebody to chaperone you?”

  “No, I was chaperoned most efficiently by Canon and Mrs. Grant as far as Bombay. They even found someone to look after me from there to Bhopal, but unfortunately she was taken ill at the last moment and instead of waiting for them to find someone else I just came alone.”

  “I see you are a very enterprising young woman,” Major Hadleigh remarked “At the same time surely you are aware that it is unheard of for any woman, married or unmarried, to travel alone in India?”

  “I thought that the English now have the Indians well under control,” Brucena parried provocatively.

  “We do our best,” Major Hadleigh replied. “Equally I hardly believe that you would travel in England without either a chaperone or a maid.”

>   “I can look after myself.”

  “I rather doubt it. It is certainly something that you must not attempt in this country again.”

  Brucena remembered the screaming yelling rioters on the Station platform. She would not give Major Hadleigh the satisfaction of knowing that they had in fact really frightened her and she could not bear to wonder what had happened to the small baby on the platform.

  “Now that you are here,” Major Hadleigh said, “I can look after you for the rest of your journey, but I feel that you will be somewhat of a surprise to the Captain.”

  “Are you working with him?” Brucena enquired.

  “I am.”

  “Then why have you a higher rank than he has?”

  Major Hadleigh smiled.

  “Your cousin is a Civil Servant appointed directly by the Governor-General. He is Superintendent of a very large territory, while I am in charge of the soldiers.”

  This was a gross understatement that Brucena was to discover later of the very special duties he undertook, but now she only smiled.

  “As you are working with Cousin William, will you tell me about the Thugs? I have been very interested ever since I learnt that Cousin William had this post nearly three years ago, but it is very difficult to find out anything about them in Scotland.”

  “Why are you so interested?” Major Hadleigh enquired.

  “I am interested in anything about India,” Brucena replied. “Actually I was born here and, although I remember nothing about it, I have always wanted to come back.”

  Major Hadleigh looked surprised.

  “My father served for some years on the North-West Frontier,” Brucena explained. “We left India when I was one year old and, although he returned later for several years, my mother and I were left in Scotland.”

  “And yet the country attracts you?”

  “It’s strange,” Brucena said after a moment, “but ever since I arrived in Bombay I have felt almost – as if I have come home.”

  He looked at her sharply, almost as if he thought that she might have been speaking merely for effect.

  However she was not looking at him but at the countryside that they were passing through, thinking that the dry arid ground, the lost little villages with clumps of trees round a waterhole, the water buffaloes plodding slowly towards it, were all things that she had seen before. Although why she should feel like this she had no idea.

  “You asked me about Thuggee,” Major Hadleigh began and instantly her eyes turned towards him with interest.

  “I hope,” he went on, “that it is something that you will learn nothing about while you are here. Yet it is essential that everyone who lives in this district should be on their guard.”

  As he spoke, he thought of what he had seen at the Temple of Kali at Bindhaghal on the Ganges.

  It was a Shrine that supplicants came to at the end of the rainy season from all over India to propitiate the Goddess.

  The tracks to the Temple were crowded with bullock carts, beggars, wandering cows and barefoot pilgrims.

  There was the fragrance of incense and blossom and the smell of dust, which swirled round the Temple walls. There was also the stink of death.

  Night and day goats were sacrificed, their blood spilling down the Temple steps and, combined with their frightened baaing, there were the shrieks of the fanatical devotees who flagellated themselves as they evoked the blessing of the Gods.

  To Ian Hadleigh, the blood Goddess, the terrible consort of Shiva the Destroyer, black, furious and naked with her bludgeon stuck all about with human skulls, was symbolic of everything he was fighting.

  With the protruding tongue and the bloodshot eyes, the haunter of burning ground, in whose heart death and terror festered, was the adored one worshipped by the Thugs.

  This was their Holy place and from here the fraternity of stranglers had for hundreds of years gone out to terrorise the travellers of India,

  The adherents of the cult had their own rituals, traditions and hierarchy and, when they strangled strangers on the road, they believed that they were killing in Kali’s cause.

  Wondering how he could possibly explain Thuggee to the young and innocent girl sitting opposite him, Ian Hadleigh looked back and remembered how it had traditionally been the East India Company’s policy not to interfere with India’s religious customs.

  In fact a blind eye had, been turned on the rumours and legends of Thuggee, but the English women now coming out more frequently from England with their reforming zeal were appalled at the native customs, which had hitherto been left to carry on as they had for centuries.

  The English were now set to put down the most offensive of these, however ancient or divinely-rooted. Human sacrifice and infanticide was forbidden, as was Suttee, the practice of the burning of widows,

  It was obvious also that something had to be done about the abomination of Bindhaghal, the Headquarters of the Secret Society of stranglers.

  The cult had not been studied, nor its ramifications looked into very deeply, until Captain William Sleeman, who was serving in the East India Company’s Bengal Army, had become interested in its ghastly mystery.

  He learnt that Thugs worked in absolute secrecy according to strictly enforced rituals.

  They were dedicated highway murderers and killed with a well-trained technique of noose-work, knee and grapple, strangling their victims from behind with a yellow silk scarf.

  Then they cut the bodies about in ritual gashes, buried them or threw them down wells, burnt any belongings of no value and carried off the rest.

  No trace of the unfortunate travellers was ever left at the scene of the crime.

  As in most activities in India, Thuggee was strictly hereditary. A boy was initiated stage by stage into his craft, first as a scout, secondly as a gravedigger and then as an assistant murderer and finally, if he could show a keen ferocity, as a qualified blurtote or strangler and an aristocrat amongst Thugs.

  It was William Sleeman who had found out the pattern and the enormous ramifications of this Society, which spread like a poisonous web over the whole of India.

  Setting up his Headquarters at Saugor, a drab town set on a forbidding lake in the heart of the Thuggee country, he organised his campaign.

  Ian Hadleigh remembered now that some of the senior Officials in the service of Indian Princes were experienced stranglers and a Sergeant drilling the soldiers of the Ruler of Hockar in the courtyard of His Highness’s Palace was another.

  Some were the trusted servants of Europeans and others had spent half a lifetime in the service of the East India Company’s armed forces and one quite recently had been a well-known Police informer in other fields of crime.

  It was frightening to think that the man you had trusted for years, a soldier who had obeyed your commands and your own servant, might have also taken the sacred oath of Thuggee,

  To the Thugs their work was sacred and they believed that their own powers were supernatural.

  They were in an occult partnership with their kin of the animal world, the tiger.

  One famous strangler had said when questioned,

  “Those who escape the tigers fall into the hands of the Thugs and those who escape the Thugs are devoured by the tigers!”

  Perhaps on reflection the tigers were less frightening!

  Major Hadleigh had heard one prisoner admitting that he had committed 931 murders by his own hand. Another Thuggee gang had three hundred men and boasted of more killings that it seemed possible for any men to achieve even over a number of years.

  Ian Hadleigh recognised that the years he had been working with Wilham Sleeman had been the most incredible, the most hair-raising and at the same time the most exciting years of his life.

  How could he explain this to the girl, fresh from England and knowing nothing of India, sitting opposite him?

  As if in some way she was aware of what he was thinking, Brucena said,

  “I want to understand and I realise fully tha
t it is a very ambitious idea, but I still have to start somewhere.”

  “I only regret that in coming to India you have begun with Thuggee,” Major Hadleigh replied.

  Brucena smiled and asserted,

  “Perhaps in a way it makes it more interesting. So many people eulogise over the Taj Mahal and the brilliance of the Administration of the East India Company.”

  There was a touch of sarcasm in her voice that made Major Hadleigh look at her critically.

  “‘Our Administration is brilliant in some ways,” he acknowledged, “but in a land as large and densely populated as India there is inevitably a great deal left undone”

  “That I can well believe,” Brucena said, “but I feel in a way it is presumptuous of us to try to change a people whose civilisation goes back long before ours. Who are we to judge whether their beliefs are right or wrong?”

  Ian Hadleigh looked at her in surprise.

  This was not the conventional attitude taken by the young women who came to India.

  Most were concerned only with the amusements they could find at Government House in the endless tea parties, the polo, the dancing and the gossiping.

  Otherwise they were earnest Missionaries of one persuasion or another, determined that whatever the Indians were doing must be stopped simply because it was different from what they themselves had been told was right or wrong at home.

  If there was one thing that Ian Hadleigh really disliked it was an evangelical Imperialism combined with a high moral fervour. He found that those who had made it their life’s work were boring and narrow-minded.

  He often thought that he preferred the superstition and savagery of India, the widow burning and the infanticide to the religious bigotry and tight-lipped, narrow-minded zeal of those who disliked even the beauty of the country because it had a seductive effect upon them.

  “I think the first thing you must do,” he said aloud, “is to try to understand the Indians as individuals, not as a whole since each one belongs to a different Caste and has a different outlook and obeys self-imposed rules that no Government, however skilfully administered, can change.”

  “It would spoil them if we did,” Brucena said almost as if she spoke to herself. “That is what I want to understand – what I want to learn about India.”