Terror in the Sun Page 3

  “Why?”

  The question was abrupt and she knew that the man asking it suspected her motives as being self-centred inquisitiveness.

  “I think the answer to that,” she responded after a moment, “is that I feel I have so much to learn from India and there is so much it can give me.”

  Again Ian Hadleigh was taken back.

  As he was wondering what to say, Brucena went on,

  “You said that everyone in India is different. That I can understand, where Caste is concerned, but surely all of them believe in one thing?”

  “What is that?

  “Their Karma. All the books I have read speak of ‘Karma’ as being all-pervading, all-embracing and something that almost every Indian adheres to not only with his mind but with his heart.”

  Major Hadleigh contemplated this statement for some seconds.

  Then he said,

  “You are right, Miss Nairn, of course you me right. I am only surprised that you should come to that conclusion or that it has been put to you in such a simple form.”

  “I read it, but I have a feeling that I have always known of it inside me, because it is what I believe myself.”

  Chapter Two

  There was a silence and Ian Hadleigh suddenly knew that he could not bear to spoil the idealism and the appreciation of India, that he knew this girl felt, by telling her of the sordid and disgusting details of Thuggee.

  Because he was a little bewildered by the revelations that she had made about herself, he said in a voice that was harder than he had intended,

  “I hope, Miss Nairn, that your ideas of India will not be spoilt by your stay in Saugor.”

  “I am sure I will find it very interesting – whatever it is like,” Brucena parried, “but I am still waiting for you to tell me about the Thugs.”

  “That is something I have no intention of doing and I think you will find that your cousins feel as I do, the less said the better!”

  It might have been the way he spoke or perhaps that she was disappointed in not hearing what she wanted to know, but Brucena felt her temper rising.

  Ever since she had met this man, she thought that he had been obstructive and difficult and she still felt that she should have saved the baby, which he had prevented her from doing by pushing her back into the railway carriage.

  He was good-looking, she thought, if one admired that kind of very British appearance, but there was something hard and ruthless about him.

  She almost felt sorry for the Thugs because he was one of the people hunting them down and bringing them to justice.

  Aloud she declared,

  “It is quite obvious, Major Hadleigh, that as far as you are concerned, I am not a welcome guest at Saugor.”

  “You are not my guest,” he replied, “and it is for Captain Sleeman and his wife to welcome you.”

  It struck Brucena that, if they took up the same attitude as the Major, she would have to find herself somewhere else to go and that might be very difficult.

  She gazed out the window and knew, as the Indian landscape sped past, that she wanted with an almost passionate intensity to stay in India and discover the country of her birth and learn about its people.

  How could she explain to the man sitting opposite her, who she felt was hostile, that India gave her a feeling that Scotland had never been able to do?

  There was something warm about it, something that, as she travelled from Bombay, she had felt in the brightness of the day and the darkness of the night and she could not put into words.

  ‘It speaks to me,’ she thought to herself.

  But already she was feeling that she had revealed too much of her inner feelings to Major Hadleighy and he would not understand.

  They sat in silence and, because her face was turned away from him, he could see only her profile.

  It was impossible not to admire her small straight nose, the soft curves of her lips and her firm little chin.

  ‘She should go back to England where she belongs,’ he thought savagely to himself.

  Then he told himself that he was being unnecessarily alarmist,

  She would be with the Sleemans and the restricted social life round Saugor would welcome her with open arms.

  Like all other girls in India she would be invited to tennis parties and doubtless small dinners at which, if there were enough men in attendance, she could dance afterwards.

  ‘She cannot come to much harm if she sticks with that sort of thing,’ Ian Hadleigh ruminated.

  But he had the uncomfortable idea that where Brucena was concerned that would not be enough.

  “I expect,” he said reflectively after a moment, “that Captain Sleeman will be able to arrange for you to stay with his friends in other parts of India, where you will enjoy seeing far finer scenery and some magnificent Temples that we cannot provide you with in Saugor.”

  “Are you still trying to be rid of me?” Brucena asked in an amused tone. “You seem to have forgotten, Major, that I am here to work.”

  “As a Nanny?” he questioned. “I can hardly see you in that role.”

  “Nevertheless it is the reason why I have come and I feel certain that I shall not find it hard to learn what is expected of me.”

  As she spoke, she thought of what Amelie Sleeman had written in well-phrased French.

  Brucena was to learn that, because her husband spoke such good French, Amelie had never become very proficient in English.

  “I do not want a stiff and starchy stuck-up Nanny who would despise both me and my methods. I just want a Scottish or English girl who will help me to look after my baby and whom I can trust not to give him opium to keep him quiet or some other devil’s brew that the Ayahs use, if one is not watching them like a hawk.”

  It had seemed a simple request at the time, but now Brucena wondered if perhaps Cousin Amelie was thinking of something far more sinister than a lazy Ayah who wanted to keep her child quiet.

  The Thugs no doubt loathed Cousin William for the way that he was hounding them down and preventing them from following what to them was a Holy craft.

  What would be a better revenge than to strangle his child or even to abduct it and bring it up in the cult that he was attempting to destroy?

  In one book that Brucena had read she found that when the Thugs killed a party of travellers and destroyed all trace of them, they occasionally took away with them, besides anything valuable, any especially attractive child.

  It was thought that they taught him to be a Thug or perhaps, far more frightening, sacrificed him to the Goddess Kali.

  Brucena felt herself shiver at the thought of such a thing happening to Cousin Amelie’s baby and told herself that her imagination was running away with her.

  Perhaps Thuggee was not half as bad as it was made out to be.

  The mystery that Major Hadleigh was making about it only added to her feeling that it was a subject that she must know more about and not be kept, as he obviously wished, in happy ignorance of the truth.

  ‘It’s my bad luck,’ she thought, ‘to have found a man the very first moment I arrive in India who has no wish to please me and not only has to obstruct me in finding out what I wish to know but who would like to be rid of me altogether.’

  She told herself that she would fight him with every weapon in her power.

  She was certain that he would try to convince her cousin that not only was she unsuitable for the job she had come out to do, but that she might also be an added danger in a life that was dangerous enough as it was.

  ‘If Cousin Amelie can put up with it, I can!’ Brucena thought firmly.

  At the same time she was apprehensive and, as the train chugged on towards Saugor, she found herself disliking the man sitting opposite her more and more.

  *

  C’est impossible! I cannot believe you are really here,” Amelie Sleeman enthused later that evening when they had dined by candlelight.

  Punkahs moving overhead made the flames swing bac
kwards and forwards as if they were on board ship.

  Brucena smiled at her and then at her cousin.

  “I was afraid that you would be angry with me for coming,” she replied.

  “No, of course we are not,” Mrs. Sleeman answered in her attractive broken English, “but we never dreamed, mon mari et moi, when we received your telegram, that you were coming here yourself instead of sending a Scots girl.”

  “They were all too frightened to travel to such a heathen land,” Brucena answered, “and quite frankly I was so glad to escape from The Castle as things have not been at all comfortable since Papa remarried.”

  “That is exactly what I said to my husband,” Amelie Sleeman said almost with a note of triumph in her voice. “I said, ‘cette pauvre petite has had, I am quite certain, a difficult time with a belle mère who could never be as pretty as she is’!”

  “Well, now you are here and that is all that matters,” William Sleeman said before Brucena could reply, “and I am glad for Amelie’s sake that she has a woman to keep her company. She finds it very lonely when I have to be away from home so much.”

  “That is true,” Amelie nodded, “I should miss you desperately, mon cher, wherever we were, but it is somehow worse here when I cannot go anywhere without an escort of soldiers and I am sure Brucena will find that a bore too.”

  “She will get used to it,” William Sleeman said with a smile, “and let me make this quite clear, Brucena, you are not to go outside the garden without letting the Sergeant in charge of the Sepoys know where you are going and, if it is out of sight of the house, he will send somebody with you.”

  “There you are!” Amelie exclaimed with an expressive gesture of her hands. “It is just like being one of your prisoners and I sometimes feel c’est moi who is locked up and not they.”

  “I think you would find the gaols at Jubbulpore and Saugor very different from the comfort you enjoy here,” William Sleeman commented drily, “and at least I don’t brand you, my dear!”

  His wife laughed.

  “I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies,” she exclaimed and then, seeing that Brucena did not understand, she explained,

  “One of the punishments for a convicted Thug is that he is branded on his back and shoulders or even on his eyelids, which is something they dislike intensely.”

  “I am not surprised,” Brucena piped up. “The punishment seems very extreme.”

  “Nothing is too extreme for men who murder for pleasure,” William Sleeman said sharply.

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then Brucena said,

  “When you have time, Cousin William, I would like you to tell me more about Thuggee. There is very little about it in any of the books on India and I understand that it is one of the most ancient secrets of the country.”

  “That is true,” he agreed, “but I have no wish to talk about it in front of Amelie. In her condition she should not be worried either physically or mentally with subjects that are unpleasant.”

  “Yes, of course, I do understand,” Brucena said quietly.

  She had already learnt that Mrs. Sleeman was expecting her baby in the New Year and at seven months she already looked large and had lost the grace of movement that had been so characteristic of her.

  She was the daughter of a sugar planter from Mauritius and it had seemed an unlikely marriage between two people of such diverse characters with twenty-one years between their ages. Yet one had only to see the Sleemans together to realise that they were extremely happy.

  Because Frenchwomen are very adaptable, Amelie was in fact exactly the right wife for William Sleeman.

  ‘I shall be happy with them,’ Brucena told herself as she went to bed that night in the small room that was next to the already prepared nursery, which was where the Nanny would have been sleeping.

  Outside she could hear the strange sounds of the hoot of an owl, the chirp of a cricket, the flutter of a bat’s wings, the barking of pariah dogs, the scuttle of some nocturnal animal in the shrubs and far away in the distance the sound that she knew was so characteristic of all India, the howl of a pack of jackals.

  It was all very exciting, a new world, and yet an old one which she felt that she had sprung from and where her roots still lay.

  ‘I am so happy to be back here with you,’ she whispered in her heart.

  *

  It was three days later that Brucena realised that, while she had been ‘digging herself in’, as it were, she had not seen Major Hadleigh.

  He had brought her to the large white bungalow on her arrival and handed her over with the air of a man who was not quite certain if he was producing a pleasant or an unpleasant surprise.

  Brucena had been well aware that there was work for him to do, because, as they had arrived at Saugor Station, a Sergeant in charge of a detachment of Sepoys had been waiting to salute him smartly.

  As she was annoyed with Major Hadleigh, she did not bother to explain to him that during the long weeks of travelling on board ship she had studied Urdu and after the first few days had found a teacher in the Second Class, who for a small sum of money had given her lessons.

  The Purser who had arranged it had assured her that the man was well qualified for the job and Brucena had found him not only a proficient teacher but also an intelligent person.

  At first she had concentrated fiercely on learning the language, determined that she would not arrive in India unable to speak anything but English.

  As the weeks went by, she found to her delight that he could tell her a great deal about his country and the customs of his people.

  He even tried to explain to her the Caste system and more important the religions, which varied from the Buddhists to the Hindus, from the Jains to the Moslems and hundreds of strange and varied sects, all of which had their rituals, their taboos and their sacred places somewhere in the vast Subcontinent.

  Some instinct in Brucena warned her to keep silent on the subject of Thuggee and not to tell her teacher that she was to stay with their archenemy Captain William Sleeman.

  She had a feeling that if he was aware of her destination he might not be so forthcoming in teaching her all that she wanted to know.

  She could not quite explain why she felt this, but she had learnt for many years to trust her instinct, which at that moment told her to keep silent about herself.

  Although she realised that there was a great deal more for her to learn where Indian languages were concerned, she understood, as the Sergeant met them on the Station platform, what Major Hadleigh said to him.

  In a low voice that she was not expected to overhear, he asked in Urdu,

  “Is there any trouble?”

  “A little Major Sahib,” the Sergeant replied. “I think tonight we should visit – ”

  Brucena did not catch the last word, but she understood the rest and was therefore slightly amused when, turning to her with a deceptive smile, Major Hadleigh said,

  “I have told the Sergeant to procure a carriage for you and I will drive with you to your cousin’s bungalow. You will find it quite impressive to be escorted by a detachment of Cavalry.”

  Brucena had certainly not been impressed by her first sight of the town of Saugor, except that anything to do with India had a beauty and enchantment that she had never seen anywhere else.

  It was set on the shore of a large lake and at one side of it there appeared to be a huge, gloomy castellated Castle, which she learnt was the prison.

  The Sleeman’s bungalow, which was outside the town, was large but simple and charming and the garden was filled with flowers whose colours made Brucena feel that they gave her a special welcome.

  She knew at once that there was no fear of the Sleemans sending her back or not being genuinely glad to see her.

  She felt in a way that the surprised but undeniable sincerity that Amelie kissed her with was really an impulsive snub to Major Hadleigh, although they had not met before.

  ‘He may not
want me here,’ Brucena thought, ‘but my cousins do and that is the only thing that matters.’

  Equally she enjoyed the feeling that she had scored off him and looked forward, with a feeling that she could not quite understand, to further wordy duels, which, however, were not forthcoming.

  Because she was curious, she asked Mrs. Sleeman about Major Hadleigh.

  “Why has he not been here?” she enquired. “He gave me the impression that he was Cousin William’s right hand man.”

  “Oh, he is. That is certainly true,” Amelie replied, “and William is very pleased with him. He has captured far more Thugs than any of the other Officers who the Regiment sent him. In fact some of them are worse than useless.”

  “I thought it was rather obvious that Major Hadleigh liked being an inquisitor,” Brucena said drily.

  “He is very brave and, although none of my husband’s other assistants would admit it, I am quite sure that secretly they are frightened. Thugs are very dangerous and thank God there are fewer of them than there were.”

  “Which is all due to Cousin William?” Brucena questioned.

  “Yes, of course. He has been absolutely wonderful,” Amelie enthused. “His prime purpose in life is not only to destroy Thuggee but to discredit it.”

  She gave a little sigh.

  “William has always said that when men fight for the sake of a cause they are immeasurably stronger and more formidable than when they fight for personal satisfaction or duty.”

  “I have often heard that,” Brucena nodded.

  “It is true,” Amelie went on, “and he is beginning to convince the Thugs that our God is greater than their Goddess.”

  “Can he really make them believe that?” Brucena asked with curiosity.

  “He told me last week that a Thug said to him, ‘you say that your God is assisting you and that Kali has withdrawn her protection on account of our transgressions. We must have sadly neglected her worship’.”

  Brucena, after this conversation, would have liked to talk more with Cousin William, but when he came home in the evening he was often dead tired.