Terror in the Sun Page 7

  ‘I wish I was not,’ she thought. ‘I want to fall in love. I want to be married and happy as Amelie is with Cousin William.’

  Then she thought of Lord Rawthorne and she shivered.

  If that was the type of man who was going to ask her to marry him, then she would rather remain an old maid all her life!

  She told herself that when she reached Gwalior she would have to be careful, very careful not to be alone with him, and the one thing she wanted to avoid above all else was for him to touch her again.

  She had washed her hand a number of times since he had kissed it and yet very annoyingly she could still feel his lips, hot, possessive and demanding on her skin.

  When she went to bed that night, Brucena looked out into the darkness.

  The stars were brilliant overhead and there was the fragrance of the flowers and the scent of wood smoke.

  It was a night made for romance, the whisperings of lovers, the songs sung passionately beside the shimmering water of the lake, a note passed from hand to hand and from lips to lips.

  Yet Brucena was not thinking about love, but of the little boy, the child with a tear-streaked face holding tightly in his hand a ball of pure silk.

  Where was he now? Where had he been taken?

  Was he being initiated into the terrible cult of the Goddess of darkness – Kali?

  She suddenly felt as if the horror and terror of the murderers were encroaching on her and she could not escape from them.

  It was one thing to read about the Thugs and even to think about them, but another to feel that they were moving out there in the darkness, intent on enjoying their lust to kill as an Englishman might enjoy the pleasure of big game hunting.

  The only difference was that they were dedicated with their whole life given to their foul murderous religion.

  It suddenly seemed to Brucena as if the very anonymity of it was so horrifying because one had no idea where to look for a Thug and no means of identifying him.

  They were in the darkness, waiting, their thirst for blood yearning to be appeased, their whole purpose to kill and go on killing secretly and in most cases without fear of identification or capture.

  ‘How can one man like Cousin William, who had first revealed the whole horror of Thuggee and now continued to fight it almost single-handed ever win?’ she asked herself.

  Whatever the rights or wrongs, he was pitting his strength single-handed against something that had existed for centuries and that was deeply ingrained in generations of Thugs.

  ‘It’s useless! It’s a hopeless cause!’ Brucena cried outin her mind.

  Then she saw again the little boy’s face with tears running down his cheeks and Cousin William with his steady blue eyes lit with the zeal of a visionary swearing that he would stamp out ‘this abomination’ now and forever.

  Chapter Four

  William Sleeman was determined that his wife should travel slowly and that the journey to Gwalior would be a pleasant one.

  Ordinarily he would have taken the journey himself without undue hurry in five days, but with Amelie and Brucena with him he was determined that they should enjoy the countryside and he would also take the opportunity of inspecting various of his own territories on the way.

  He was amused by Lord Rawthorne’s insistence that they arrive as soon as possible and he was not so obtuse as not to realise that the reason was a desire to see Brucena rather than to entertain them with the festivities he was arranging in their honour.

  However he considered his own interests more important.

  He therefore sent a number of messengers ahead to arrange for him to see the Officials in the territories that he would be passing through and also instructed them to make sure that the accommodation that they were to stay in was the best available.

  Brucena was impressed by the precise and methodical way that Cousin William had planned the journey.

  They set out very early three days later, travelling in what she appreciated was a particularly smart turnout with four fine bays pulling their carriage, which she knew had cost a large amount of money.

  They were escorted as usual by Sepoys and Cavalrymen and, when she exclaimed at how Royal the entourage looked, Cousin William had laughed,

  “If we had not had to get there so quickly” he had said, “we should have done it in real style, as I intend to travel next year when I carry out inspections.”

  “Will you look more important than you do at the moment?” Brucena had asked him.

  “Certainly,” he had said, “because then I shall be preceded by an elephant and carried in a palanquin!”

  He smiled as if he mocked himself as he had added,

  “In my be-feathered cocked hat I really inspire respect and admiration even from the Thugs!”

  Brucena regretted the absence of the elephant, but she enjoyed the excitement that their horses and carriage caused wherever they appeared.

  She soon learnt that Cousin William was not only respected but trusted, one might even say loved, by the people in his Province.

  Many of them already realised the relief they enjoyed from the oppressive menace of the Thugs. They could travel more safely and were not blackmailed into silence as undoubtedly they had been in the past.

  When Brucena said this to Cousin William when they were alone, he shook his head.

  “There is still a great deal more to be done and I am not really happy in knowing that, if I drive them out of this Province, they will merely menace the people in other parts of India.”

  She knew as they journeyed on that he was thinking all the time of how difficult Gwalior was making his work by allowing the Thugs to take refuge there.

  He had already, although she was not aware of it, confided to Ian Hadleigh that it would be of tremendous help if the visit gave then an inkling as to which of their wanted men were seen in Gwalior.

  “Do you really think they will show themselves?” Major Hadleigh asked,

  “Remember, a lot of them have no idea that we are even aware of their existence. But you and I have our secret list of names. I am certain that a great number of those on it think of themselves as anonymous.”

  “That is true,” Ian Hadleigh agreed, “and we must certainly keep our eyes open.”

  “I am relying on you mostly to do that,” William Sleeman replied, “and you know how successful you have been in the past when I have sent you on missions that I thought no one else could bring to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  “Thank you.”

  The two men smiled at each other and they both knew that in this struggle they were grateful for each other’s comradeship and understanding.

  There was no one else in whom William Sleeman could confide.

  He had no wish to spoil the romantic happiness that he had with Amelie by harrowing her with the unsavoury details of his work.

  Of course she knew a certain amount about it, but he tried when he was at home to interest her in other things and they had a close bond in common in the subject of agriculture and sugar canes that they had first met through.

  William Sleeman was also extremely interested in trees.

  When the Government had congratulated him on the huge success of the Mauritius sugar canes, to celebrate the occasion he had started to plant an impressive avenue of trees from Jhansi Ghat on the Nerbudda River to Mirzapur on the Ganges.

  The fruit that the trees were to bear was to be left every year for travellers to enjoy and he somewhat ironically had the trees planted and nurtured by former Thugs under his direction.

  This had made him study the flora of India more closely than he had done before and Amelie with his help made some delightful sketches of flowers and plants that they knew would interest their friends at home in England.

  While they drove North towards Gwalior, Cousin William pointed out to Brucena everything that he thought she would find interesting and she found that he usually had fascinating stories to tell about the people they passed on the road.
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  She learnt things from him such as that nine Hindus out of ten throughout India believed rainbow to derive from the breath of a snake and that a shooting star meant that a great man had been born that night or a great man had died.

  Then one day on the journey when Amelie fell asleep, he told Brucena some of the superstitions that she had longed to know about the Thugs.

  In a voice so low that his wife could not overhear him, William Sleeman said that before setting out on their expeditions to murder the Thugs make their oblations to Kali and to Bhowani, the Goddess of smallpox.

  Before they left some of the gang would proceed in the direction they were about to take to observe the flight of the birds and to listen to the chirping of the lizards.

  “What is the meaning of those sounds?” Brucena asked.

  “The lizard chirping,” William Sleeman replied, “or a crow making a noise on a living tree on the left side are good.”

  “And are there others?” Brucena enquired.

  “A great number,” he answered. “The appearance of a tiger is deemed an excellent sign and the noise of a partridge on the right side of the road denotes that they will meet with good booty on that very spot. Accordingly they will wait there for their unfortunate victim.”

  “And what signs forecast bad luck?” Brucena questioned.

  “A hare or a snake crossing the road before them, an owl screeching and the noise of a single jackal.”

  “It all sounds very complicated.”

  “I am glad to say it does make their task more difficult,” her cousin replied. “They are unlucky to murder a person of the Kamale Caste and also metalworkers, carpenters, washer-men, stonecutters, pot-makers and lepers!”

  Brucena gave a little cry.

  “That does not seem to leave many potential victims.”

  “They find enough,” William Sleeman said drily, “and many a party of travellers owe their lives because amongst them there was a man driving a cow or a female goat.”

  “Do Thugs strangle only the rich?” Brucena wanted to know.

  William Sleeman shook his head.

  “There is no difference for them between rich and poor for theirs is a religious duty,” he commented.

  “I cannot think why you chose this very difficult task of suppressing these particular people.”

  “I think God did that for me,” William Sleeman said simply and Brucena knew that he believed it to be the truth.

  Amelie then awoke and they went back to the subjects of trees and flowers.

  Many of the people they passed on the first part of their journey were walking and had a packhorse or a donkey to carry their goods.

  Two days later they saw the Lohars in their handsome wooden bullock carts that were studded with brass inlays and nails and with wheels carved with the signs of the Zodiac.

  Brucena exclaimed about them and William Sleeman explained,

  “The carts creep from village to village as the Lohars apply their hereditary trade of making fine tools.”

  “Do they travel all over India?”

  “They wander because in the sixteenth century,” William Sleeman replied, “when their Rajah Pratap Singh was defeated by the Moslems, the tribe made a vow that its people would never live in Rajasthan until Pratap Singh was King again. They are still hoping that someday he will return.”

  It was this sort of story that made the journey pass quickly for Brucena and she slept peacefully at night to dream of the mango groves, the banyan trees and the little villages where the elders clustered in the shade while the children played naked with one another on the dusty brown earth.

  The mud huts, the bullocks dragging clumsy wooden ploughs, the sudden sight of a clump of hibiscus flowers, the smell of woodsmoke and blossom and occasionally the music of a flute had a magic that Brucena felt she could never describe to anyone who had not actually seen it themselves.

  They sometimes stopped for quite a long time while William Sleeman consulted with the elders of a village or received a report from one of the District Officers.

  There young men always looked at Brucena with admiration when they met and wistfully when they departed, leaving the Englishman to a lonely existence in which he coped with the problems and difficulties that arose daily and unceasingly in small Indian communities over an area of hundreds of square miles.

  At last, when it seemed that they had travelled for an interminable time, they moved into the undulating country of Gwalior, which was very different in every way from the land that they had just passed through.

  There were rivers and many more trees than they had seen previously and finally in the distance a great red Fort topped a precipitous ridge, appearing to menace the town beneath it.

  The Fort had a long and lurid history. Rajput women had destroyed themselves by fire between its walls and the Moghuls had poisoned prisoners by giving them the juice of poppies mixed with poisonous flowers.

  Several times the British had captured the Fort and returned it to Sindia.

  “I cannot help feeling,” William Sleeman said as he looked ahead, “that we are approaching the Capital of a Dynasty of Barbarian Princes who, like Attila the Hun, would choose their place of residence as the devils choose Pandemonium.”

  “Be careful what you say, dearest,” Amelie begged him.

  “I have hated Gwalior,” he replied, “ever since the first time I came here. Before I reached my camp a gang of thieves had stolen one of my best carpets and the brass brackets of my tent poles!”

  The way he spoke made both Amelie and Brucena laugh.

  “Let me warn you to be careful,” he said seriously. “I remember a minor Rajah who came here some years ago to pay his respects to the then Maharajah of Gwalior and he had all his jewels, clothes and valuables rifled.”

  Amelie put her hand tip to her neck as she remarked,

  “I now wish that I had not brought my pearls with me.”

  “That same Rajah,” her husband went on, “also lost five horses and he warned me that I should cut off the tails of all my horses or they would certainly be panicked from the camp and ridden off into the night.”

  “Are things just as bad now?” Amelie asked.

  “I would not be surprised,” he replied, “although I imagine that, as we are guests of Lord Rawthorne, we will be fairly safe. Yet thieves are thieves wherever you may find them. I advise you both to keep with you always anything you have of value.”

  “I cannot understand why you did not tell me about this earlier,” Amelie complained.

  William Sleeman laughed.

  “I was rather afraid that if I did, you might refuse to come at the last moment. As I wished to get into Gwalior without offending the Resident by saying that I am here on business, I thought it best to keep silent.”

  “It was very naughty of you, dearest,” Amelie scolded him.

  But both William Sleeman and Brucena knew that she was not really angry.

  Their reception was certainly impressive.

  Guns were fired, Lord Rawthorne rode out to meet them with a detachment of Cavalry carrying pennants, flowers were thrown into their carriage and great crowds of people cheered as they drove through the town towards The Palace.

  The old town of Gwalior was a mile and a half from the new town of Lashkar, ‘the Camp’, so named when the previous Maharajah, a warlike man, had pitched his tents there in 1809.

  He had started to erect a permanent building surrounded by a Park or compound so vast that, Brucena was told later, tigers strolled through it thinking that they were still in their own wild territory.

  The Palace was very impressive and it was surrounded with crimson bougainvillaea.

  There was the din of a vast number of kettle drums and the braying of barbaric trumpets and then, passing The Palace itself, they came to a smaller building, which Lord Rawthorne, now riding beside them, told them was his Guesthouse.

  They stepped out and Brucena thought that despite the annoying manner in w
hich Lord Rawthorne was looking at her, despite all that Cousin William had said about Gwalior, she was glad that she had come.

  Lord Rawthorne was in his element and had obviously been given carte blanche by the Maharajah to entertain his guests as he wished. There appeared to be an army of servants to look after them and Brucena and Amelie’s rooms were decorated with a profusion of flowers.

  “He is certainly being very attentive,” Amelie said as she and Brucena went to their bedrooms to freshen themselves up after their journey. “I am quite certain that, if William and I had come without you, our welcome would not have been so overwhelming!”

  Brucena laughed.

  “At least I have my uses!”

  Amelie looked at her reflectively.

  “His Lordship is very presentable and, I believe, very rich.”

  “If you are matchmaking,” Brucena replied, “you can forget it. If you want the truth, I find him rather repulsive.”

  “An English Lord has great social standing, I am told,” Amelie observed.

  “That is true,” Brucena agreed, “but being English I have no wish for an arranged marriage. So stop scheming, Amelie! When I do decide to become someone’s wife, I want to be in love.”

  “I can still go on scheming!” Amelie flashed, “You would look very pretty in a coronet.”

  “And so would you,” Brucena retorted, “but instead of looking for a French Duc or at least a Comte, like your father, you settled for an English Political Officer who lives in the wilds of Saugor!”

  “That is true,” Amelie exclaimed. “But William is different and far more attractive than any other man in the world. So you can give up looking for his equal.”

  “Whatever you may say, I shall still go on hoping to find another William,” Brucena retorted and went to her bedroom.

  There were two Indian maids to wait on her and, as she took off her bonnet, she saw a note on her dressing table.

  She guessed who it was from and did not open it until she had changed her gown.

  Then somewhat reluctantly she took it up in her fingers, feeling that Lord Rawthorne was already encroaching on her in a manner that she was sure he would maintain for the whole of her stay.