Nizams Daughters

the land, collected, stored, year after year. This was a heat that annealed rather than scorched, invigorated rather than weakened. He looked about as they trotted back to where the captain’s barge was being hauled ashore. Faces were turned towards them — open, warm-looking. It took a while for him to tumble — black faces. Or rather, brown; darker, certainly, than he had somehow imagined, and in stark contrast to the pearl-white buildings behind them. And the colours of their clothes — so bright, so unrestrained. Never had he seen their like. Heavens, but these women were arresting — shapely, graceful, smiling unselfconsciously. He wanted to jump from Jessye’s back to embrace them. How a head could be turned in this place!

Up on the embanked promenade bearers were porting richly caparisoned palanquins. Only an elephant would have been needed to complete his schoolroom image of the Indies. And, though separated by half the globe from all he loved, he was roused once again by his commission here — and already thinking of how Henrietta too might one day, soon, thrill to such a landing.

As he came up to the captain’s barge he saw the ambassage engaged with Peto. ‘And this, we must presume,’ said one of the officials, turning, ‘by his most obvious and characteristic mounted landing, is the captain of cavalry of whom you speak?’

The voice was a little precious, the language overflorid, but it was nonetheless warm. Hervey, soaked to the skin and barefoot, jumped down and held out his hand. ‘This is Captain Hervey, Mr Lucie,’ said Peto; ‘Hervey, Mr Philip Lucie, fourth in council at the presidency here.’

Lucie was a little older than Hervey, about the same height, though with a sparer frame, and he wore his clothes with a studied elegance. ‘You are half-expected, sir,’ he said with some bemusement.

Hervey was even more bemused, for Madras formed no part of the itinerary given him by Colonel Grant. ‘Indeed, sir? How so?’

Lucie smiled. ‘My sister has received a letter from Paris informing us that you were to come to India.’

What in heaven’s name, he wondered, might this man’s sister have to do with Colonel Grant? ‘I am honoured to be the subject of such correspondence — though, I confess, somewhat puzzled.’

Peto made a restive noise which hastened Lucie to full revelation.

‘My sister has some affinity with the lady to whom you are engaged to be married. Which lady wrote to her here from Paris, though she did not imagine you would see Madras.’

Hervey looked astonished. ‘No, we… that is…’

‘I have explained our circumstances, Hervey,’ huffed Peto. ‘May we proceed to business, Mr Lucie? I have no time to waste.’

‘Of course, Captain,’ he smiled. ‘I have already alerted the naval commissioner to your presence. But since you expect to be engaged here these several days, perhaps I might extend to you and Captain Hervey the hospitality of my quarters at the fort? I believe we may offer you a table worthy of the Company — or, I should properly say, of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.’

Peto, though tempted to make some remark touching on the propriety of that company, contented himself with a brisk acceptance for the following day; ‘For there is much to attend to aboard my ship while there is still light. But Hervey, here, is entirely free to avail himself of the Company’s hospitality at once.’

It took no time at all for Philip Lucie to arrange for Captain Peto to see the naval commissioner, and that officer, though about to proceed on home leave, threw himself with the greatest energy into the expedition of the captain’s several requests. The injured crewmen of the Nisus were brought ashore soon afterwards to the naval hospital — a fine-looking two-storey infirmary with an airy balcony running the length of the upper floor, and with separate quarters to isolate contagion. It stood half a mile or so outside the fort, surrounded by palm trees, and when Peto called on his return from the shipwright’s office he was quickly reassured in leaving his men in the care of its native staff, though their faces were more than ever alien to him after so many months at sea. His final business was with the storekeeper, and this was conducted with the same brisk efficiency as at the shipwright’s, so that Peto was afterwards able to express himself much privileged to meet with officials capable of such address. Even so, he declined once more Lucie’s invitation to dine at Fort George that evening: ‘My compliments to the governor, sir, but I must first superintend the repairs to my ship. Captain Hervey will, no doubt, have much to speak of with your sister.’

Madras was one of the most agreeable places Hervey had ever seen. Of that he was sure, even on so short an acquaintance. Most of the houses and public buildings which lay along the shoreline were extensive and elegant, limed with chunam which took a polish like marble, putting him in mind of pictures of Italian palazzi. Most had colonnades to the upper storeys, supported by arched, rustic bases, and it was not difficult to imagine himself somewhere along a Mediterranean rather than an Indian coast — though perhaps the minarets here and there might place him further towards Constantinople than to Naples. It was the pagodas which settled his true location, however, and it was as well that he should see them now, for a short distance away Fort George, with its lines and bastions, its Government House and gardens, and St Mary’s church, suggested that despite all contrary indications Madras was a place as British as Leadenhall Street — the distant headquarters of this remarkable company.

Madras, the captain’s clerk had told him, was a place that had turned its back on India, looking out to the east rather than to the country itself, unlike Bombay and Calcutta. Here, said the clerk, the English conducted themselves as if in London. The displays of fine equipage along the Mount Road of an evening, where to be seen at the cenotaph in memory of Lord Cornwallis was to attain the acme of society, rivalled anything that might be observed in Hyde Park. And afterwards, if there was no meeting at the racecourse nearby, whose graceful stand would have been the envy of Newmarket or Ascot, the occupants of these elegant carriages would return home, dress in great finery and dine to the accompaniment of the most superior wines. Then, perhaps, having dressed once more, they might repair to a ball, to dance until the early hours before at last retiring. And when husbands had, next day, gone to their offices, blades would visit from house to house retailing news, or to ask commissions to town for the ladies, to bring a bauble that had been newly set, or one of which the lady had hinted before — one she would willingly purchase for herself but that her husband did not like her to spend so much — and which she might thus obtain from some young man, a quarter of whose monthly salary would probably be sacrificed to his gallantry.

The captain’s clerk might warn that Madras was become depraved, but to Hervey that morning it was simply alive. ‘Then you must stay with us at Fort George for as long as you are able!’ said Philip Lucie. ‘Let us show you how civilized a country this may be.’

Nothing could have been more welcome to him, for the entreaty meant the indulging of Jessye in the presidency stables. Above all, it meant he might have some intimation of Henrietta’s response to his leaving Paris in such haste. The mere fact of her writing to a friend suggested she was not unsympathetic; but he was more than ever fearful that he had likely trespassed a journey too far.

That evening, as the oven heat of the day gave way to a balminess that seemed from the pages of an old Indiaman’s recollections, Hervey and the fourth in council dined together in the place of England’s first footing on the subcontinent. In the short time at his disposal, Philip Lucie had given considerable thought to their fare, at first supposing it apt to display the culinary glories of Madras, a taste to which he was wholly devoted. But he had later thought better of it, for he knew that the privations of a long sea voyage did not always render the digestion welcoming of assault by spices (he had not been in the east for so long as to forget his own first, tumultuous encounter with Madrasi spices). So, instead, he conceded to digestive prudence: after a mild native pepper soup they would proceed to the finest beefsteaks in India.

They were to be made four at dinner, he explained. His sister would soon arrive, having spent the day driving in the peace and quiet of the hills west of the city, and they would be joined by another, whose company he was sure Hervey must admire. ‘But first allow me a quarter-hour’s leave. I have to sign articles of authority. Here,’ he said, handing him a sheet of paper, ‘this will entertain you — the bill of lading for our gallant general who left for England with his staff yesterday.’ And with that Lucie courteously abandoned him to the sights and sounds, and most conspicuously the smells, of his new surroundings.

Hervey, wearing the lightest clothes that Lucie was able to find him, stood on the terrace of this gentlemanly residence, closed his eyes and listened to the rising chorus of cicadas from the gardens all about. What the sources were of the procession of smells he could scarcely imagine, for, beyond the occasional wisp of smoke, he had not encountered them before. None was rank, and most were agreeable. They were, he expected, restrained compared with those he might find in country India, but they were wholly alien nevertheless.

To his side came, without a sound, a khitmagar bearing a silver tray. Hervey started on seeing him, then felt