namaste as the rajah appeared. A fanfare of huge trumpets echoed the occasion beyond the palace walls, and the elephants, though their fighting days were long past, raised their trunks in salute. Out of a palanquin draped in silks and studded with semi-precious stones stepped the raj kumari. Hervey’s telescope moved at once to her, for her purple saree set off everything about her which might make a man admire a woman. She bowed to her father, took his hand as he led her to the mounting steps, and most gracefully did they both ascend to the howdah. The rajah stood acknowledging the acclamation of the courtyard, and then signalled to Captain Steuben atop the magnificently accoutred Shisha Nag for the assemblage to move off (Steuben was the only European whom Hervey could see in the procession, for not even Selden was there). He watched them leave the maidan and went then to the stables, for although he had business enough to occupy him with a pen all day, the urge to follow the procession was too great. He wanted to see this singular cavalcade at its fullest extent, and the Godavari durbar where its design would be fulfilled.
Johnson, in the way that only he seemed able, had anticipated him, and Jessye and one of the rajah’s country-breds stood saddled in their stalls. In five more minutes they were leaving the palace by a side gate, and heading for the low-lying hills which overlooked the river and the road to the oxbow, so that they might observe discreetly, respectfully.
The great basin of the upper Godavari was nothing like as green as at other times, except the forested slopes of the northern side, an abutment of the Eastern Ghats, whose dark canopy extended as far as the eye could see. On the flood plain itself there were comparatively few trees, and at this time of year the black cotton soil and rocky outcrops were bare of signs of cultivation. During the rains the tableland would become grass country once more, a vast grazing ground and fodder store for the thousands of placid beasts which served the people of Chintalpore. Between the city and the oxbow the river was a wide, sedate stream — as it was, indeed, for much of its length. The only obstruction between here and the sea 150 miles to the east was caused by shallowing across two or three sections of rocky bed where the river traversed the strike of the adjoining hills, barring the way to navigation when the water was low. On the eastern borders of Chintal, where the domains of the nizam, the Company and the Rajah of Nagpore successively adjoined those of Chintal, there were points of great beauty. Here the Godavari became enclosed between the Bison range (so called because of occasional visits by that stocky game) and the hills of Rumpa. The steeply shelving cliffs and crowded forests of bamboo, teak, tamarind and fig might have been those that overlooked the Lorelei, except that no castle or other work of human hand was to be seen.
In an hour or so they were nearing the oxbow, almost a full mile behind the cavalcade, on the higher ground to the south. But such was the brightness of the sun, and the clearness of the air, that the procession could easily be observed in all its detail without even a telescope. The saffron lance pennants first drew the eye to the escort, whose sowars still sat tall in the saddle. Then to the bullock carts and the camels which carried the means for the rajah’s feast, and then to the gaggle of ryots who followed, as always, hopeful of some benediction of the rajah, or better still some material benevolence — and some blessing by Shiva or Kali or the spirits of the Godavari. In truth, they came because they had always come, for if they did not, then perhaps there might be no monsoon, no harvest. Such was the way with Hindoo gods.
But it was the state elephants that truly commanded Hervey’s attention. At this distance their massiveness, their substance, their belittling of every living thing, was at its plainest. The howdahs added half their height again, and their golds, silvers, crimsons and vermilions stood in sharpest contrast with the baked colours of the land. No greater distinction between the highest prince and the meanest
Carefully he worked himself nearer to the oxbow, not wanting to be seen, for it seemed (for all its panoply) so private an occasion. He might have got closer still, but at a furlong from the rear of the great press of ryots, behind the ranks of sepoys, he halted shouldersdown in a nullah and took out his telescope.
‘What d’ye see, Captain ’Ervey sir?’
He swept left to right along the whole line of the durbar — perhaps a quarter of a mile of tight-pressed souls, all silent. ‘There’s a sadhu haranguing them. I can’t hear what he says but I think they’re swearing the oath.’ He allowed himself a faint smile of satisfaction: Locke’s way had so nearly prevailed. He had come close to accepting Locke’s counsel indeed, for the instant that muskets, powder and ball were placed in the hands of the sepoys they would be given the means of insurrection they had formerly lacked. But Chintal, of all places, could not be held subservient by mere force of arms. There must be a voluntary compliance in its subjects, both civil and military. The rajah knew it too. And that was why the rajah now had to meet the test four-square, knowing that if Hervey and he had judged things wrong his sowars might save his person, and that of the raj kumari, but his dominion would be lost.
Rousing cheers broke from the ranks of the resworn sepoys. The rajah descended from his state elephant, mounted the white Turkoman and rode along their front rank acknowledging the loyal greetings — testing their fidelity, even — by his very closeness. He rode back to the centre of the line, stood high in the stirrups and made his little speech of obligation and satisfaction. When he absolved them of the year’s service without pay there was another full-throated roar of devotion, and he walked his charger directly towards them, the ranks opening to let him pass, the sepoys making low namaste. And as the great tamasha began — with its spit-roasts and rice, its breads and its spices — the rajah rode from the parade with a stature that even Hervey, through his telescope, could see was enhanced. An escort of but a half-dozen lancers rode with him, south and east towards the low-lying hills where earlier Hervey and Johnson had taken their ease as the durbar assembled.
He lowered the telescope… and then raised it quickly again. It was the sudden surge near the state elephants. Like the wind across a field of corn. Shisha Nag was it not? Throwing up his head, lashing with his trunk, raising a great dust. Hervey could not make out what disturbed him. All he could see was Seejavi standing close by, swaying gently, this way and then that. He rubbed his eye clear of moisture and put the telescope to it again. And he saw the body of a man being carried, as if it were a half-filled palliasse, from where Shisha Nag had raised such a dust. He wondered which unfortunate mahout or sepoy had fallen victim to the young male’s bile — or even to old Seejavi’s wiles.
* * *
A little trail of dust marked the rajah’s progress. Hervey did not even have to broach the crest of the obliging nullah to keep station with him. Where the ground first began to rise, a mile or so from the oxbow, the dust settled and he edged a little up the nullah’s banks to see where the rajah and his escort were halted. He could see them quite clearly, almost two full furlongs away, by an ancient pagoda in a secluded mango grove. The rajah waited as the lancers beat about the ground (for leopard were not unknown in these parts) and then, as his escort retired to the other side of the little hill which hid the pagoda from sight of the river, he dismounted and entered the sacred building. Hervey could see it all quite clearly from his hollow in the ground. He was about to lower his telescope, for he had no wish to spy on the rajah during his devotions, when he noticed, a hundred yards beyond the grove, under a banyan tree, a bullock cart. And then, after a short while, the rajah emerging from the pagoda and walking towards it. A figure emerged from the shade of the tree and made namaste — a shrivelled little man in a sunhat. Hervey turned his telescope back to the cart: two of the thinnest-looking oxen, cream-coloured, yoked side by side, stood patiently. How many oxen, carts and shrivelled little men there were in all of India he could not begin to imagine, but he knew he had seen these ones before.
Three pariah kites glided high above the palace with not a beat of any wing in the five minutes Hervey observed their ascent. They described a lazy but precise circle over the royal gardens, as if disdaining the city beyond, and without any apparent interest in prey on the ground. Perhaps the birds knew that now, in the heat of the day, though still no greater in this month than that of an English summer, few warm-blooded creatures left the shade. At length he walked to the stables, hoping to find Selden there.
‘Hervey, come and take a look at this mare. Have you seen a foaling before?’
‘Not since Jessye herself,’ he replied.
‘Well, you might this evening. She’s waxed up, but she’s not sweating yet, so she’ll drop it after dark is my bet, as most do.’
The mare, a light-chestnut Arab, was standing calmly on a deep bed of straw, her syce keeping watch anxiously inside the foaling box. ‘Very well then, Bittu,’ said Selden to him in his native Telugu as he left. ‘Send for
