Rama.”
“Rama,” Jack repeated softly, his mind racing.
“Wasn’t Rama a Hindu god?” Costas said.
Pradesh nodded again. “The image of the perfect man, raised to godhead, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. But it’s as I said before-he’s an upstart here. The beliefs of the Koya have virtually nothing else in common with Hindu religion. The legend of Prince Rama, his wanderings and his search for spiritual redemption, is found all over southern India. The Koya believe this was where he ended up, finding his rightful kingdom in the heart of the jungle.”
“Heart of darkness, more like,” Costas said, looking at the dense green slopes on the opposite shore, swatting at a cloud of mosquitoes that had enveloped him.
“Is that where you’re taking us?” Jack said. “To the shrine?”
Pradesh took a deep breath and nodded, fingering the tiger pendant. “I went there when I was a boy. It was forbidden, but as a lowlander by upbringing I didn’t believe in the superstition. No Koya had visited it since that day in 1879. My grandfather said there was a terrible storm that night, thunder and lightning. An earthquake sealed up the entrance after the two officers had left. To the Koya that was an absolute sign that the worst horror would befall them if they went anywhere near the place. And now there’s another reason for staying away. The shrine’s next to a stream in a jungle clearing, and it’s been used by the Maoist guerrillas as a base. They caught me once and let me into their camp, and they played with me. That was before they murdered my father. I’ve been wanting to go back ever since.”
“It sounds as if both you and Jack are on a mission,” Costas said.
“Your ancestor the muttadar also wanted to get to the shrine when he stood beside Lieutenant Howard on the river steamer at this spot all those years ago,” Jack added.
“I’d never try to put myself in the mind of a Koya holy man. He may have been my ancestor, but that’s one place I definitely don’t want to go.” Pradesh looked at Jack, his expression steely. “And my mission’s not about ancient gods and spirits and idols. It’s about the present day. It’s about the duty of a son to the memory of a murdered father.”
Jack nodded, then swung his legs out over the bow of the boat, ready to push off Pradesh sat down and turned on the ignition. “We’ve got about five hours of daylight left. The chopper should be here in forty-five minutes. That gives us time to visit the village on the opposite shore. There’s something I want you to see.”
“Let’s move,” Jack said. “From what you say, we don’t want to be out here after dark.”
Costas slapped a mosquito on his neck, leaving a bloody smudge. “Roger that.”
10
Jack knelt in the bow of the pontoon boat, holding the painter line in readiness as Pradesh swung the tiller and nosed the boat out of the river current into a backwater by the shore. At the last moment he gunned the engine and rammed the keel up onto the sandy beach that fronted the jungle. Jack leapt out with the line, ran a few paces across the hot packed sand and tied it to the stump of a tamarind tree. Pradesh killed the engine and tilted it, then he and Costas jumped out on either side and pulled the boat up as far as they could. Jack tightened the line and looked around. The sand was pristine, as white as he had seen anywhere. He had half-hoped to find something straightaway, some evidence of that fateful day in 1879, but he also half-feared it, as if he were apprehensive of awakening some atavistic trauma inherited from his ancestor. But the sand was spotless, and there was no ancient stain of sacrifice. He saw where the monsoon flood had swept around the curve of the river, churning up the sand and re-creating the beach every year. He looked up to where the gorge narrowed, and remembered the words of a Victorian engineer who had seen the Godavari in full spate: It foams past its obstructions with a velocity and turbulence which no craft that ever floated could stem. They had only come a few hundred meters from the opposite shore, but it was as if they had crossed some kind of sacred boundary into another world. Even the air smelled different-tangier, organic- and the light above the fringe of the jungle had a peculiar aura, as if the air itself were stained green and blue at the interface between the canopy and the sky.
“Come on.” Pradesh walked across the sand to an opening in the jungle between two trees, a well-worn path up the slope that led to the reed and bamboo houses they had spied from the opposite shore, built above the level of the flood. “This is one of the track-ways traced by the sappers in the wake of the 1879 rebellion, but it was neglected after they left. They weren’t given the resources to put anything permanent into the jungle, and things haven’t changed much since.” Costas trudged behind him, and Jack brought up the rear. Costas took out a can of insect repellant from his bag and liberally sprayed his exposed parts, passing it to Jack. “One small step for mankind since 1879,” Costas muttered, slapping a blood-filled mosquito that had bitten through his shirt. Pradesh turned around and watched. “It’s about the only thing that has changed,” he said. “Prepare to walk back in time.” A huge spider scurried over the rocky path between them, and Jack froze, catching his breath. Pradesh saw him. “Normal animal reaction,” he said. “It’s the first thing we were taught in jungle warfare training school. You step under the canopy, you instantly lose the veneer of civilization, you become an animal again, feral. You use it to your advantage, the heightened awareness. But it also reawakens primal fear, the survival instinct. Spiders can do it, and snakes.”
“And tigers,” Costas muttered. “I think I need a drink.”
“That’s another way of dealing with this place, unfortunately a little too tempting for the Koya people.” Pradesh turned and led them up the path, across gigantic roots of tamarind and teak that had twisted over each other, enveloping the clearance made in 1879. There was a rustling overhead like wind in the leaves, and a troop of monkeys screeched. They reached a level patch and walked past several houses, each a modest affair of bamboo uprights with a roof of overlapping palmyra leaves, surrounded by a narrow verandah fronted by a trellis of bamboo and palmyra leaf stalks interwoven with sprouting bean shoots. Costas pointed at a fresh red mark on the wall. “That symbol looks strangely out of place.”
“A hammer and sickle,” Jack murmured.
Pradesh glanced back, his lip curled in disgust. “The Maoist guerrillas. They see the Koya as their allies, but you don’t curry favor by desecrating the buildings of your friends. When they’re sober the Koya are pretty contemptuous of them, but the hill tribes have been driven into a corner and are desperate for some backing against the mining companies. The ideology of the Maoists means nothing to them, though, and this will be daubed over soon enough.”
Jack and Costas followed him toward the end of the level ground where the jungle closed around the village and began to climb in tangled profusion up the slope. There were signs of life all around, wisps of smoke from fires, half-stacked wood, carved wooden toys, but they could see no one. “Where are the people?” Costas murmured.
“Watching us,” Pradesh said. “For them, being invisible is second nature. It’s something else you learn in the jungle, how to meld in. They know who I am, but they’ve had other outsiders here recently, mining prospectors, and they’ve got reason to be suspicious.” He led them into a small clearing beyond the village, hemmed in by soaring trunks of rosewood, satinwood, palm, teak. He squatted by the base of a hoary old tamarind and pointed to a slab of ochre-red sandstone about half a meter across that had become embedded in the trunk, rising up as the tree grew. Costas knelt beside him. “One of those sacred stones you were talking about?”
Pradesh shook his head. “Look closely. This is what I wanted to show you.”
“Okay. I see it’s got an inscription on it.”
Jack squatted down on the other side of the tree, where the light was better. He touched the stone, feeling the roughness, the condensation. There were several lines in English, crudely carved. He read out the words: WILLIAM CHARLES BEBBIEASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, CENTRAL PROVINCESSHOT BY THE REBELS, 20 AUGUST 1879AGED 41
“That’s your guy, isn’t it, Jack?” Costas said. “The one who led the sappers into the jungle, the official responsible for this area who’d hardly ever been up here before?”
“That’s him all right,” Jack murmured, placing the palm of his hand on the stone.
“Pretty basic inscription. I mean, no sacred memories, rest in peace, all that.”
“He was lucky to get an inscription at all. This must have been done by the sappers when they got back from
