me at once when her breathing becomes laboured.’ And then, turning to Hervey: ‘Come — tea and words, I think.’
Hervey agreed.
In the cool seclusion of Selden’s apartments Hervey spoke his thoughts freely. He must leave Chintal as soon as possible — within the week, he hoped. The Jhansikote business was something he ought not by rights to have intervened in. ‘Have you yet located the papers for the jagirs?’
Selden frowned. ‘Hervey, it is a trickier business than you suppose. I don’t have right of access to such documents. I must choose my time.’
Every day he remained here, Hervey protested, he prejudiced his chances of being received by the nizam — which was the duke’s foremost commission.
‘Yes, I understand full well,’ sighed Selden; ‘and I am conscious — acutely conscious — of your having gone to Jhansikote on my promise.’
Hervey would have said some words of mitigation (for he suspected he could never have stood aside, having accepted the rajah’s hospitality), except that to do so might have lessened Selden’s resolve to find the documents. ‘Then you will try to bring matters to a conclusion before the end of the week?’
Selden nodded.
Hervey poured himself some tea and sat by the window.
‘By the by,’ said Selden, sitting in a chair draped with a tigerskin, ‘you have heard of the elephant going must at the durbar this morning.’
Hervey, gazing out intently at the pariah kites still circling, could truthfully say he had not, for he had seen it at a distance, and no-one had spoken of it since his return.
‘Extraordinary business: it tore a man from its howdah. The fellow’s back would have broken as it hit the ground, but the great beast trampled him for good measure. He was brought here post-haste in a doolie — dead as mutton.’
‘Was it anyone of note?’ asked Hervey, though not, in truth, greatly exercised, for he was becoming accustomed to death in India.
Selden raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice. ‘Captain Steuben.’
‘Good heavens!’ gasped Hervey, turning back towards the salutri. ‘Good heavens! The poor fellow. How perfectly dreadful… what ill fortune—’
‘But not, I’m sure,
‘Why do you say… on what evidence do you believe…’
Selden turned back to him, but he merely raised both eyebrows.
‘Come, man: you must have
‘I cannot suppose anyone to be innocent of the affair of the batta who had the opportunity to be otherwise.’
Hervey poured himself more of the cinnamon tea. He could not, he said, gainsay Selden’s logic. ‘And yet I cannot somehow believe—’
A sudden commotion below the window halted his speculation. They leaned out, to see several dozen of the palace staff babbling excitedly and calling on the salutri. ‘Come,’ said Selden, making for the door. ‘Something’s amiss.’
They followed the little crowd to the other side of the gardens, to one of the summer wells. Another babble; this time of outdoor servants as they pulled out the body of a man, gagged, and bound with ropes. They parted to let the salutri through. He needed only a glimpse of the smooth cheeks, the long straight hair and the doll-like upturned nose to recognize him.
‘Kunal Verma,’ he sighed, shaking his head.
‘Who?’ said Hervey.
‘Kunal Verma — the rajah’s dewan, keeper of his treasury. And of land deeds.’
XIV. THE SUBSIDIARY ALLIANCE
Chintalpore was becoming hot and the air heavy. The south-west monsoon, the yearly salvation of the tens of thousands of ryots who dwelled so close to the soil as to be almost indistinguishable from it, was a full three months away. Throughout the winter months, the sun being low, the surface of the earth in Hindoostan had been steadily cooling until now its temperature was lower than the seas adjoining it. By some as yet unfathomed effect no moisture-bearing clouds could be induced to leave the ocean and water the land. But from March onwards, with the sun higher, and its strength bearing directly on the land for longer, the surface of the earth would speedily become hotter than the ocean. And when this inversion came about, by some equally unfathomed effect, moisture- laden clouds from the south-west would march steadily landwards until, by about the end of May, they would be watering the Malabar littoral prodigiously, and as far north even as Bombay. By the middle of June, if the gods had granted a favourable monsoon, Chintal’s fearsome heat and enervating humidity would be relieved by the daily downpours. Thereafter, there would be a bountiful harvest and plenty in the land. But if the gods were not propitiated and did not grant a good monsoon, then there would be misery, starvation, death. Which of these there was to be would increasingly occupy the prayers of the Rajah of Chintal’s subjects in this onset of the hot season. But as for the rajah himself, what most occupied his mind, and filled his prayers, was the nizam.
Hervey had sent letters to Guntoor for Madras and Paris, together with a note for the collector advising him of his intention to leave for Haidarabad at the end of the (yet another) week. Having become more circumspect since Jhansikote, and now with the complications in respect of the jagirs since the death of Kunal Verma, he intended to proceed with more formality. However, Selden had been unable to transact the business with the land registry. It was not a propitious time, the salutri explained, for the rajah’s ministries were in confusion. Another ten days or so, he believed, would see things better placed.
The letter to Colonel Grant had exercised Hervey a great deal. His immediate disposition had been to write a complete account of all that had passed, yet in successive drafts he had been unable to render any account that did not convey an inauspicious picture of his mission. This he partially ascribed to the difficulty of portraying the peculiar circumstances of Chintal, but mostly he knew it to be the result of his own misjudgements to date. And so he had in the end written a somewhat bland narrative, referring to one or two setbacks, but confident of ultimate success on all counts.
This and the letter to Madras urging the Company to come to the rajah’s aid with an offer of subsidiary alliance had occupied the whole of one evening and most of its night, and so when the hircarrah left for Guntoor next morning it was without any letter to Horningsham. This had not done much for Hervey’s spirits, and he had therefore thrown himself into lance drill with the rissalahs. It perfectly occupied his mind — though the price was heavy, with more than one crashing fall from misjudging the angle of strike on a tent peg. But neither did he think it time wasted in the wider scheme of things, for although the lance was merely his ostensible reason for being in India, the Chintal rissalahs were proficient with the weapon — skilled, even — and his findings would surely find a place at the Horse Guards as they considered at this very moment what should be the future of the lance in the British cavalry.
The Chintal sowars carried lances made of bamboo, ten and a half feet long, with a bayonet-shaped steel head. ‘I dare not recall how close I came to feeling the lance’s point at Waterloo,’ said Hervey to Captain Bauer one morning as they watched another round of tent-pegging, shaking his head at the thought.
‘I am surprised you do not have lancers, after so many years’ seeing their effect,’ replied Bauer, his German heavy.
‘Oh, do not mistake me, sir, for I myself am as yet unconvinced. The lance, for all its fearsomeness, has limited utility compared with the sabre.’
