Part 32 (1/2)

The memsahib seated herself on a stone in front of him. Glancing at her, he saw that her face, still gray from fright, was now filling with curiosity. From her lap, Saboor Baba regarded him intently.

”You have done a brave thing, Yar Mohammad,” she said in Urdu, frowning up at him, ”but how have you come to be here? Why are you not at camp, at the horse lines?”

”I have followed you since yesterday,” he said, then hesitated. ”I thought I had lost you until I saw the palki, then the baba.”

She looked puzzled. ”Why have you followed us? How do you know Shaikh Waliullah's palanquin?”

How should he answer? He had walked most of the night and part of the morning, looking on the road for that very palki.

She pointed to the ground. ”Sit,” she said. ”Speak.”

He lowered himself to the ground and extended his arms over his knees.

He watched his fingers pick indecisively at one another. She was the Guardian. After what she had just done to save Saboor, he could have no doubt of that truth. Perhaps it was his duty to tell her of his dreams, of his wondrous meeting with the Shaikh.

He sighed. The story would take some time to tell, and he was not a teller of stories. ”There is so much ...” he began.

”There is time,” she said kindly. ”Begin at the beginning.”

He would not begin at the very beginning, for Shaikh Waliullah had forbidden him to speak of the vision in which he received into his hand the small ceramic vial.

”One morning at the British camp,” he began, watching a beetle hurrying over a dried leaf, ”I had a dream of smoke, and of a lioness....”

When he had finished, the Englishwoman stared off into the distance for a long time without speaking.

”A lioness,” she said at last, her voice sounding far away. ”Shafi Sahib, interpreter of dreams. That is why I felt I was being watched....” Her voice trailed off.

”Tell me one more thing,” she said, sitting straighter. ”Why were you weeping?”

Yar Mohammad bit his lip. ”I did not mean to hurt the thief so badly.” He glanced to where his kukri knife lay in the dust. ”He will never walk again. If he had been a horse with that wound, I would have been forced to cut his throat.”

THE British camp had done its traveling for the day. Hours ago, teams of coolies had erected the durbar tent and the red compound wall. Since then, the dead-eyed man and the dirty-faced boy had waited, squatting beside the avenue in the shade of the durbar tent, watching the folded entrance to the red compound.

The boy spat into the dust. ”We should have made that eunuch come with us, Jagoo. He would easily recognize the child. How do we know we have not missed him?”

”Be quiet.” Jagoo turned his flat gaze on the boy. ”We haven't missed him. The eunuch swore that he is here. Stop giving advice and watch for that bent-over manservant the eunuch described. He will lead us to the brat.”

Since yesterday, they had traveled with the camp, walking anonymously toward Kasur, lost among a crowd of laborers and baggage animals. As soon as the camp had been erected, they had posted themselves at the back of the compound and watched the kitchen entrance. They had seen not even a glimpse of the child.

”Perhaps he is ill,” Jagoo had said. ”Whoever has him is being careful, keeping him out of sight.”

They had stolen their food by day and slept in the open at night, making their own small fire with pilfered charcoal. Now, as they waited by the durbar tent, interesting people pa.s.sed by them on the avenue. Some were children, ripe for stealing, but none answered the description of the child Saboor for whom the eunuch was willing to pay such a rich price.

”We have missed him,” insisted the boy.

”You know nothing.” Jagoo's voice was less certain than before.

The boy scratched himself. ”I know something,” he said as they watched a pa.s.sing bullock cart. ”I know that Ha.s.san Ali Khan, the father of Saboor, has been sent out of Lah.o.r.e on the Maharajah's work. And I know where he is.”

Jagoo stopped chewing his wad of betel and tobacco. ”What is this? What have you not told me?”

”The child's father is at Kasur. Before we left the city, while you were asleep, people were talking outside our door. They said Ha.s.san Sahib, the son of Shaikh Waliullah, has gone to Kasur to get tax money for the Maharajah. He is not more than ten miles from here.”

Jagoo's blow caught the boy cruelly on his temple, knocking him sideways against the canvas of the durbar tent.

”The eunuch is a fool,” he rasped, as the boy crawled to his knees, a hand to his head, ”and so are you!”

It was dark by the time Mariana's palanquin stopped outside the little walled city of Kasur. She half listened, yawning, while her bearers asked a pa.s.serby the direction of Ha.s.san's tents.

”An-nah!” Saboor murmured in her ear as he tugged at one of the enameled bangles on her wrist.

Soon she would be back at the British camp, back in familiar clothes, although nothing there would ever be the same as before.

How exciting, how filled with promise, even the dullest camp day had seemed only a short time ago! Now, after the scandal, even the White Rabbit would find it hard to take her part. Lord Auckland, she knew, was lost to her forever. She was not speaking to the Eden sisters. If she were lucky, Major Byrne and the doctor would ignore her. If she were unlucky, they would make unkind remarks. Mr. Macnaghten, thank goodness, had already left for Afghanistan. But there was no sense worrying about it. For all the unpleasantness it promised her, she could not deny that the British camp was where she belonged.

Now, at least, they would stop telling her to avoid the natives.

She could always count on Dittoo, Yar Mohammad, and Muns.h.i.+ Sahib. And there was another ray of hope. According to Yar Mohammad, the great Shafi Sahib was staying at the camp. It was maddening that the interpreter of dreams had been so nearby all along, attached somehow to the army or the government in the curious way of natives, and she had not known. Perhaps, if she asked him, he would interpret her dream of the guided s.h.i.+p. Perhaps he would give her hope for the bleak days to come.

”Come here, Saboor,” she said, beckoning the child who had crawled to the foot of the palanquin. ”See?”

When he crept back, she dropped her thin silk veil over his face, and then pulled it off in a quick gesture, watching his smile broaden, waiting for his bubbling laugh.

It was Shafi Sahib, of course, who had sent the message, delivered by Yar Mohammad, on the night she had first taken Saboor. ”You have done well. Wait for your instructions. Tell no one what you have done.” She tried to imagine his face. Did he, like Shaikh Waliullah, radiate a mysterious power?

According to Yar Mohammad, Shafi Sahib was a Punjabi, and the old Shaikh's childhood friend. It could be that he had already left the British camp, to spend time in Lah.o.r.e with the Shaikh. How disappointing that would be!

The palanquin began to move. Tired of her game, Saboor had climbed onto her lap in order to pull on her gold chain. Cooing to him, she unwound his fingers, remembering Shaikh Waliullah's house, and the view from the ladies' upper window. Perhaps, at this moment, the Shaikh and Shafi Sahib, both wearing tall headdresses, conversed in his courtyard by the painted portico, while the Shaikh's female relations sat together on the sheet-covered fioor of the upstairs room.

She sighed. The Shaikh's sister had been so strong, so motherly. Mariana would have liked, just once, to have wrapped her arms about Safiya Sultana's bulky form.

As for the Shaikh, she now understood that she was more to blame than he was for her reckless marriage to Ha.s.san. But even that did not matter now.

Perhaps it was a good thing that it would take months and months for the now army-less camp to return to Calcutta. She needed time to decide on her future. Tied to a native stranger, unable to marry, should she return to England and live quietly with her family? Or should she remain in Calcutta and brave the gossip, hoping to see Fitzgerald again, a man she could never wed?

The palanquin thumped to the ground.

With a little sigh, Mariana swung her feet out through the open panel, and stood, waiting while Saboor, who liked to do it himself, clambered out on his own.

The night was cold, the air sharp. Stars made a dazzling tapestry overhead. A large tent with a curving roof loomed before them. Outside, by a fiickering fire, two men leaned on bolsters, a smoking hookah between them. Seeing her, one of them stopped speaking in midsentence.

Servants of various sizes stood around her palanquin. As Mariana hoisted Saboor to her hip, all gaped in momentary astonishment, then spun about, turning their backs to her as men everywhere had done since she left Lah.o.r.e.

”Saboor Baba,” she heard one of them murmur. ”The memsahib has brought Saboor Baba.”

Ordering her bearers to wait, she paused by the entrance, then, coughing to announce her presence, pushed aside the door hanging and entered.