Part 98 (1/2)

”So it seems your luck changed after all, Amba.s.sador. For now. But I fear it may not last. As a friend I suggest you make the most of it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The dark sky had begun to show pale in the east, heralding the first traces of day. Hawksworth stood in the shadows of his tent, at the edge of the vast Imperial camp, and pulled his frayed leather jerkin tighter against the cold. He watched as the elephants filed past, bulky silhouettes against the dawn. They were being led from the temporary stables on the hill behind him toward the valley below, where cauldrons of water were being stoked for their morning bath. Heating the water for the elephant baths had become routine during the reign of Akman, who had noticed his elephants s.h.i.+vering from their baths on chilly mornings and decreed their bath water warmed henceforth.

As he watched the line of giant animals winding their way through the camp, waving their trunks in the morning air, he realized they were not docile female _zenana _elephants, but male war elephants, first and second rank.

First-ranked war elephants, called ”full blood,” were selected from young males who had demonstrated the endurance and even temper essential in battle; those granted Second Rank, called ”tiger-seizing,”

were slightly smaller, but with the same temperament and strength. Each elephant had five keepers and was placed under the training of a special military superintendent--whose responsibility was to school the animal in boldness amid artillery fire. The keepers were monitored monthly by Imperial inspectors, who fined them a month's wages if their elephant had noticeably lost weight. Should an elephant lose a tusk through its keepers' inattention to an infection, they were fined one eighth the value of the animal, and if an elephant died in their care, they received a penalty of three months' wages and a year's suspension.

But the position of elephant keeper was a coveted place of great responsibility. A well-trained war elephant could be valued at a hundred thousand rupees, a full _lakh_, and experienced commanders had been known to declare one good elephant worth five hundred horses in a battle.

Hawksworth studied the elephants, admiring their disciplined stride and easy footing, and wondered again why the army had stationed its stables so near the Imperial camp. Did Arangbar somehow feel he needed protection?

”They're magnificent, don't you think?” s.h.i.+rin emerged from her tent to join him, absently running her hand across the back of his jerkin. It had been six days since they had left Agra, and it seemed to Hawksworth she had grown more beautiful each day, more loving each night. The nightmare of the past weeks had already faded to a distant memory. She was fully dressed now, with a transparent scarf pinned to her dark hair by a band of pearls, thick gold bracelets, flowered trousers beneath a translucent skirt, and dark _kohl _highlighting her eyes and eyebrows.

He watched, enthralled as she pulled a light cloak over her shoulders.

”Especially in the morning. They say Akman used to train his royal elephants to dance to music, and to shoot a bow.”

”I don't think I'll ever get used to elephants.” Hawksworth admired her a moment longer in the dawn light, then looked back at the immense forms lumbering past, trying to push aside the uneasy feeling their presence gave him. ”You'd be very amused to hear what people in London think they're like. n.o.body there has ever seen an elephant, but there are lots of fables about them. It's said elephants won't ford a clear stream during the day, because they're afraid of their reflection, so they only cross streams at night.”

s.h.i.+rin laughed out loud and reached to kiss him quickly on the cheek.

”I never know whether to believe your stories of England.”

”I swear it.”

”And the horse-drawn coaches you told me about. Describe one again.”

”It has four wheels, instead of two like your carts have, and it really is pulled by horses, usually two but sometimes four. It's enclosed and inside there are seats and cus.h.i.+ons . . . almost like a palanquin.”

”Does that mean your king's _zenana _women all ride in these strange coaches, instead of on elephants?”

”In the first place, King James has no _zenana_. I don't think he'd know what to do with that many women. And there are absolutely no elephants in England. Not even one.”

”Can you possibly understand how hard it is for me to imagine a place without elephants and _zenanas_?” She looked at him and smiled. ”And no camels either?”

”No camels. But we have lots of stories about camels too. Tell me, is it true that if you're poisoned, you can be put inside a newly slain camel and it will draw out the poison?”

s.h.i.+rin laughed again and looked up the hill toward the stables, where pack camels were being fed and ma.s.saged with sesame oil. The bells on their chest ropes sounded lightly as their keepers began harnessing them, in strings of five. Hawksworth turned to watch as the men began fitting two of the camels to carry a _mihaffa_, a wooden turret suspended between them by heavy wooden poles. All the camels were groaning pitifully and biting at their keepers, their customary response to the prospect of work.

”That sounds like some tale you'd hear in the bazaar. Why should a dead camel draw out poison?” She turned back to Hawksworth. ”Sometimes you make the English sound awfully naive. Tell me what it's really like there.”

”It is truly beautiful. The fairest land there is, especially in the late spring and early summer, when it's green and cool.” Hawksworth watched the sun emerge from behind a distant hill, beginning to blaze savagely against the parched winter landscape almost the moment it appeared. Thoughts of England suddenly made him long for shade, and he took s.h.i.+rin's arm, leading her around the side of their rise and back into the morning cool. Ahead of them lay yet another bleak valley, rocky and sere. ”I sometimes wonder how you can survive here in summer.

It was already autumn when I made landfall and the heat was still unbearable.”

”Late spring is even worse than summer. At least in summer there's rain. But we're accustomed to the heat. We say no _feringhi _ever gets used to it. I don't think anyone from your England could ever really love or understand India.”

”Don't give up hope yet. I'm starting to like it.” He took her chin in his hand and carefully studied her face with a scrutinizing frown, his eyes playing critically from her eyes to her mouth to her vaguely aquiline Persian nose. ”What part do I like best?” He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. ”I think it's the diamond you wear in your left nostril.”