burned.” After a moment he continued, voice still lower, “It was hell on earth. There was nothing we could do. We burned the bodies, and turned back.”
None of the others said anything; there was nothing they could say to take the haunting vision, the knowledge, away.
Eventually Rafe drew a massive breath and turned to face them. “So what’s happened here?”
“I returned empty-handed,” Logan volunteered.
Del glanced at Gareth, then offered, “We’ve learned more-been told much more-but it’s all hearsay. Nothing we can put before a court-nothing good enough to take home.”
“That’s the positive side,” Gareth said. “On the negative, Ferrar now knows beyond doubt that we’re watching him. Investigating him.”
Logan shrugged. “That was inevitable. He couldn’t be oh-so-clever and yet miss the fact we’re here, on Hastings’s direct orders, and with no mission we’ve seen fit to divulge.”
Rafe nodded. “At this point, it can hardly hurt. Perhaps knowing we’re after him will make him careless.”
Del humphed. “So far he’s been unbelievably shrewd in keeping everything unincriminating. We’ve turned up even more of those documents, more or less contracts he’s enacted with various princelings, but the cheeky sod always uses his special Black Cobra seal on the correspondence, and he signs with a mark, not a signature.”
“And his writing is English-grammar-school-standard,” Gareth added. “It could be any of ours.”
Another moment of glum resignation passed, then Rafe asked, “Where’s James?”
“Not in yet, apparently,” Del replied. “He’s expected today-I thought he’d be in earlier, but he must have been held up.”
“Probably the lady didn’t approve of riding above a sedate canter.” Rafe managed a weak smile, then turned back to the maidan.
“There’s a troop coming in,” Logan said.
The comment focused all eyes on the group approaching the gates. It wasn’t a full troop, more a mounted escort riding alongside a wagon. It was the slow, steady pace the small cavalcade held to, as much as the somber deliberateness of the sowars, that told them this wasn’t good news.
A minute ticked past as the cavalcade drew nearer, cleared the gates.
“Oh, no.” Rafe pushed away from the railing and started across the maidan.
Narrowed eyes locked on the cavalcade, Del, Gareth and Logan slowly came to their feet, then Del swore and the three vaulted over the railing and headed after Rafe.
He waved the cavalcade to a halt. As he strode down the wagon’s side, he demanded to be told what had happened.
The head sowar, a sergeant, dismounted and quickly followed. “We are very sorry, Captain-sahib-there was nothing we could do.”
Rafe reached the tail of the wagon first and halted. Face paling under his tan, he stared at what lay in the bed.
Del came up beside him, saw the three bodies-carefully laid out, but nothing could disguise the mutilation, the torture, the agony that had preceded death.
Distantly conscious of Logan, then Gareth, ranging behind him, Del looked down on James MacFarlane’s body.
It took a moment to register that beside him lay his lieutenant and the troop’s corporal.
It was Rafe-who of them all had seen more of the Black Cobra’s lethal handiwork than any one man should ever have to bear-who turned away with a vicious oath.
Del seized his arm. Simply said, “Let me.”
He had to drag in a breath, physically drag his gaze from the bodies before he could raise his head and look at the waiting sowar. “What happened?”
Even to him, his voice sounded deadly.
The sowar wasn’t a coward. With creditable composure, he lifted his chin and came to attention. “We were more than halfway back on the road from Poona, when the Captain-sahib realized there were horsemen chasing us. We rode on quickly, but then the Captain-sahib stopped at a place where the road narrows, and sent us all on. The lieutenant stayed with him, along with three others. The Captain-sahib sent the rest of us all pell-mell on with the memsahib.”
Del glanced at the wagon bed. “When was this?”
“Earlier today, Colonel-sahib.”
“Who sent you back?”
The sowar shifted. “When we came within sight of Bombay, the memsahib insisted we go back. The Captain- sahib had ordered us to stay with her all the way to the fort, but she was very agitated. She allowed only two of us to go with her to the governor’s house. The rest of us went back to see if we could help the Captain-sahib and the lieutenant.” The sowar paused, then went on more quietly, “But there were only these bodies left when we reached the place.”
“They took two of your troop?”
“We could see where they had dragged them away behind their horses, Colonel-sahib. We didn’t think following would do any good.”
Despite the calmness of the words, the outward stoicism of the native troops, Del knew every one of them would be railing inside.
As was he, Gareth, Logan, Rafe.
But there was nothing they could do.
He nodded, stepped back, drawing Rafe with him.
“We will be taking them to the infirmary, Colonel-sahib.”
“Yes.” He met the man’s eyes, nodded. “Thank you.”
Numbly, he turned. Releasing Rafe, Del led the way back to the barracks.
As they climbed the shallow steps, Rafe, as usual, put their tortured thoughts into words.
“For the love of God,
Why?
The question rebounded again and again between them, refashioned and rephrased in countless ways. James might have been younger than the rest of them, but he’d been neither inexperienced nor a glory-hunter-and he wasn’t the one they called “Reckless.”
“So
After a moment, Del answered, “He had a reason-that’s why.”
Logan sipped the arrack Del had ordered instead of their usual beer. The bottle stood in the center of the table, already half empty. Eyes narrowed, he said, “It had to have been something about the governor’s niece.”
“Thought of that.” Gareth set down his empty glass and reached for the bottle. “I asked the sowars-they said she rode well, like the devil. She didn’t hold them up. And she tried to veto James’s plan to stay behind, but he pulled rank and ordered her on.”
“Humph.” Rafe drained his glass, then held out his hand for the bottle. “So what was it? James might be lying in the infirmary very dead, but damned if I’m going to accept that he stayed back on a whim-not him.”
“No,” Del said. “You’re right-not him.”
“Heads up,” Rafe said, his gaze going down the verandah. “Skirts on parade.”
The others turned their heads to look. The skirts in question were on a slender young lady-a very English lady with a pale, porcelain face and sleek brown hair secured in a knot at the back of her head. She stood just inside the bar and peered through the shadows, noting the groups of officers dotted here and there. Her gaze reached them in the corner, paused, but then the barboy came forward and she turned to him.
But at her query, the barboy pointed to them. The young lady looked their way, then straightened, thanked the boy and, head high, glided down the verandah toward them.
An Indian girl swathed in a sari hovered like a shadow behind her.
They all rose, slowly, as the young lady approached. She was of slightly less than average height; given their
