The Game

fury as she bent to snatch cigarette and holder from the floor.

“Jimmy, you’re such a bastard,” she hissed, jabbing the end of the cigarette back into the ivory, all of us ignoring the servant’s quick gathering-up of glass from around our feet.

“Cousin, aren’t you glad to see me?” he asked, and without waiting for her answer, turned at last to me. Fortunately with his hand, not his lips.

I hesitated. Had I not been here for a purpose, I would have turned my back on the maharaja of Khanpur, but the impulse ran up against the thought of explaining to Geoffrey Nesbit why I had departed the state so hastily. I looked at his outstretched hand just long enough to make my feelings clear, then without enthusiasm allowed him my fingers.

“Mrs Russell, I trust you found your rooms to your satisfaction?” His grin was boyish, his eyes danced with amusement, but there was something altogether too calculating behind the charm.

“It’s Miss Russell,” I corrected him coolly, “and yes, Your Highness, they’re quite nice, thank you.”

“Ah. Tommy told me you were married,” he said, his voice rising to a question.

“I am.” Let him figure it out. The element of puzzle allowed the calculation to edge further into his expression, and then it was gone, and his firm and welcoming handshake was over. “Very well: Miss Russell, welcome to Khanpur.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you ride?” he asked, as at a sudden thought.

“I do.”

“Some of us are going out in the morning,” he said. “If you don’t object to blood sport. You too, Gay. You used to be one for the spear.” I could not tell if I was imagining the air of double-entendre to his last comment, but Gay seemed in no doubt. She put up her chin and gave him a regal glare.

“I’ve grown up some since then, Jimmy. I’m a little more choosy about my sport.”

He laughed, and said to me, “Seven o’clock if you like, Miss Russell, just ring for a riding outfit.”

And then he was gone back to his other guests, leaving me wondering at the peculiar tremors that followed in his wake.

Gay was working to get the knocked-off end of her cigarette alight, her hands not altogether steady. I watched her, thinking that it would take a good deal to shake an aristocrat like this from her self-confidence.

“He’s your cousin?” I asked.

She finally had the thing going, and drew deeply on it, closing her eyes briefly against the smoke. “Distant cousin, of a sort. My mother’s mother was married to Jimmy’s father’s sister’s brother-in-law.”

“And people say the European monarchy is confusing.”

She did not seem to register my remark. “We went to school together for a couple of months, when my parents got the emancipation bug and decided I should go with my brothers, and the school took a while to figure how to get rid of me. And later Jimmy came home with my brothers a couple of holidays.” She shot a dark look across the hall to where he stood, his back to us. “If that girl is your friend, her mother should be told not to leave the child alone with him.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” I promised.

“It’s just that he’s . . . persuasive.”

“I see.”

Gay glanced down at the end of her holder, where the stub was nearly burnt out, and plucked it out with her long fingernails, allowing it to fall onto the ornate tiles. “Suddenly I’m not hungry. I think I’ll go back to my rooms. Have a nice ride in the morning.”

Shortly thereafter we were ushered in to dinner. “Casual dress” extended to the procession, as well, which was more of a general drift in the direction of a doorway than an arm-in-arm procession. But the place we were taken belied any informality.

This had been, I thought, New Fort’s durbar hall, where traditionally the king met with visiting dignitaries whom he wished not only to entertain, but to intimidate. The Fort’s was immense, and if the adjoining room had felt like an underwater grotto, this was like standing inside the world’s largest emerald. Flashes of green and blue quivered in the air, the mosaic so lush the hand wanted to brush the walls, the tongue to taste it. Where the stone was not inlaid, it was covered either with gold leaf or high mirrors, tossing back the colours and the light of two dozen elephant-sized crystal chandeliers that hung from a golden ceiling forty feet above our heads. The floors were thick with silken carpets, and an orchestra, half hidden behind the inlaid marble purdah screens of the upper level, began a Mozart concerto as we rinsed our hands in rose-scented water poured from long-necked silver jars.

The meal itself was extreme, a bizarrely overdone ordeal-by-food, the kind of meal forced on unwelcome courtiers for the bitter amusement of bored kings. Dish after dish, each richer than the last, European alternating with Indian to the benefit of neither, all ornately arranged on the heavy gold plates, half of them giving offence to one guest or another—beef appeared twice, in this Hindu land, and slips of prosciutto ham so the Moslems (or in my case, Jew) wouldn’t feel neglected. Lobster flaked with silver leaf and whole grilled songbird served on platters made of their brilliant feathers, saffron-infused snakes’ eggs and curried peacocks’ tongues, roast kid stuffed with raisins and pistachios, and a score of other dishes beat upon our senses. Whatever wasn’t swimming in honey or ghee was drenched with cream, and long before the final courses, all my neighbours had been reduced to picking at their plates, and most of them looked somewhat green, particularly when the dizzying odour of sandalwood wafted in clouds from the upper levels.

When at long last the final glistening blancmange had passed from our plates and the music that had accompanied the banquet ceased, we staggered from our places like so many pardoned criminals, only to have the announcement come that there would be dancing on the terrace. The man at my side, an English popular novelist, groaned, and muttered something about the maharaja having given up sleep. Sunny, the peacock tongues clearly wreaking havoc with her sense of well-being, tried to summon her customary enthusiasm.

“It might be nice, to work off some of that food,” she said gamely.

I suspected that the maharaja’s rather sadistic sense of humour would not permit a gentle glide across the floor, and indeed, the band instantly set off on one of the more vigorous modern dance-steps. I shook my head.

“Perhaps we’d best go and see how your mother is,” I suggested in a firm voice. The relief with which Sunny seized on this escape would have been funny, if the very idea of laughter hadn’t been so physically repugnant.

We found a servant to lead us to the Goodheart rooms, where Sunny did not argue overmuch with her mother’s prescription of early bed. I, too, escaped the dance terrace, despite the opportunity for asking questions of half-stunned individuals ripe for indiscretion. With the amount of sleep my distended abdomen would be allowing me this night, the seven o’clock ride would come all too soon.

Chapter Sixteen

A set of riding clothes awaited me in the morning, although all I took from the laden tray that accompanied them was a single cup of tea. I moistened my long, mistreated hair with some almond oil that I had bought in the Simla market and bound the plaits closely to my head. The jodhpur trousers I had asked for fit well, and the boots, although somewhat loose around the calves, were long enough not to cramp my toes. I stretched my arms and shoulders against the shirt and jacket, finding the fit just loose enough for free movement, and put on the gloves (snug but long enough) but left the spurs where they lay. I then picked up the hat sent for the purpose, a sort of fabric-wrapped topee, and presented myself to the waiting chuprassi.

The servant led me into the gardens, where more servants and a motorcar stood waiting.

“How far is it to the stables?” I asked. I’d seen the map and didn’t think it far. “Can’t we walk?”

“Certainly, memsahib.” The man closed the motorcar door obediently. “It takes fifteen minutes only.”

We went out of the gate and into the morning sun, where I stopped to raise my face to the welcome warmth. Directly across from me, separated by the chasm of cliffs and road, were the gates of the Old Fort. The doors themselves stood open, although there was no sign of life there. Weeds sprouted from the walls, and from potholes in the narrow track climbing from the road.