Nizams Daughters

serjeant was already trying to staunch the bleeding as he reached him, but so much blood was there that the end could not have been in doubt. His eyes were open and something of a smile came to them as he saw Hervey. He gripped the soldier’s wrist, squeezing with that strength which Hervey had so admired, trying thereby to tell him something.

Hervey smiled back. ‘Thank you, my dear, dear friend. Without you it could not have been done!’

Locke’s eyes smiled even stronger, his breathing like the raj kumari’s mare when the incision was made. His other hand reached for his gorget and pulled it from his neck, snapping the chain. He held it out to Hervey, his eyes somehow managing to tell him why.

‘For your…’ he cursed himself that he did not know her name.

Locke nodded his head.

‘I will see she is well provided for,’ he said, tears now running down both cheeks.

And then Locke’s eyes closed, and his head rolled gently to one side in his serjeant’s arms.

Hervey swallowed very hard. ‘Samson hath quit himself like Samson,’ he stammered.

XIX. RECALL

Chintalpore, two weeks later

Jessye nuzzled him, searching his pockets for some favour. Hervey put his nose to hers so that their breathing spoke secretly for them, as it always had. He rubbed her muzzle with his palm. The pinpricks, through which the krait’s venom had spurted to mix with her blood and scheme its way to her vitals, were now healed, her body purged of all poison. He found her a piece of candied fruit and she took it gently from his hand, not greedily as would the Kehilans in the stalls either side of her. Tomorrow he might take her out — an easy ride, a walk only — in the cool of the morning, to coax her back to the hale condition in which she had been before the snake’s assault.

‘Mr Somervile is greatly interested in village medicine,’ said Emma Lucie, watching from a discreet few paces.

Hervey nodded. ‘Would that I had had greater faith, too. The subedar begged me to let him go to find a sadhu, but I couldn’t bear to have a stranger dancing round her, throwing ash about and blowing on a pipe.’

‘And it was a Brahman who came, you say?’

‘So Johnson says. He gave her a potion, though I can’t imagine how she could have been induced to take anything, prostrate and her heart failing. It was mungo root, apparently a native cure for snakebite.’

‘Ah yes, indeed: Ophiorrhiza mungos is its botanical name. I was reading of it in my natural history only yesterday.’

‘Oh — so it is more than village magic?’

‘I believe so. It is a well-known antidote with grasscutters, but I have never heard of its use with equines.’

‘You are very ingenious, Miss Lucie. You have extensive learning, and are yet open to all you see in this country.’

‘It might very well be fatal not to be,’ she said, smiling.

‘In its most literal sense, too,’ he conceded. ‘For the snakebite I should, myself, have trusted to potash, but that would have been of little account had it not been used at once. And I had none.’

Hervey pulled Jessye’s ears again, and gave her another piece of candied fruit. ‘I’ve sent Johnson with a purse of silver. I should have liked to go myself but time is pressing.’

‘How long do you have remaining?’

‘I can’t delay beyond tomorrow.’

‘Philip will be sorry he shan’t see you before you go.’

‘And I him. Not least to be able to tell him in person all you have done.’

‘Not all, I should suggest!’

He looked away sheepishly. ‘I cannot thank you enough. When did you make the discovery?’

‘Soon after the rajah had set off to join you. It was the only ledger I had not looked at.’

‘And you read through every page?’

‘That was my intention, but it was there on the third — very plain.’

‘Even so, its significance might not have—’

‘Captain Hervey!’ she scolded. ‘I cannot think that anyone would not connect the Duke of Wellington’s name in a land register and the presence of one of his ADCs! I wonder, though, that you did not give me any more direct indication of your mission.’

He glanced around awkwardly, but there was no-one else about. ‘Perhaps so, madam. I’m obliged none the less. And the evidence?’

‘The ledgers are wholly beyond redemption: they were sodden by the time they were recovered from the well. It has saved you and me a difficult choice.’

‘I have thought a great deal about that, I may say, Miss Lucie.’

She simply smiled and shook her head.

‘And still there is no idea who might be the culprit?’ he asked, leaving the trickier matter.

‘It would seem not. All the ledgers and documents were taken from my room while I was with the rajah and thrown down the same well in which Kunal Verma perished. But the rajah is sure that his spies will soon begin to speak now that his position is more secure.’

‘As you say, their taking removed a fearful temptation. And so now the disposal of the jagirs is a simple matter for the duke’s new agent in Calcutta. How very fortunate things have turned out, when only days ago all seemed lost.’

She did not reply, merely raising an eyebrow instead.

Jessye was contentedly chewing the best hay that could be had in Chintalpore — though that was no better than Daniel Coates would feed his sheep in winter. He patted her neck. ‘I wish Selden could have seen her recovered,’ he sighed. ‘His was a tortured life, I think. I pray his soul finds more rest.’

Emma Lucie said not a word.

‘I am sure that nothing will ever be found to implicate him in the batta fraud.’

‘Let us hope not,’ she replied.

Silence descended on the stables once more, broken only by the slow grinding of hay. Hervey seemed perfectly content to watch his mare restored to her proper appetite, content with no more thoughts, let alone words, of the perfidy that had sapped Chintal in the late months.

It was Emma Lucie who chose to speak first. ‘I have been reading some of the most sublime verse from the rajah’s shelves.’

‘Indeed?’ said Hervey, imagining it — without very great enthusiasm — to be some profound native poetry.

‘You have read Herbert?’

She surprised him. Herbert on the rajah’s shelves? ‘George Herbert — yes. I have more often sung it, though.’

‘And I,’ she smiled. ‘It makes fine hymnody.’

‘I believe I can say that my father has never coveted anything so much as Herbert’s former living. His parish lay a little further down the valley. I was thinking about those parts as you came into the stable. You must visit with my family in England, Miss Lucie. I think that Henrietta would very much like to see you again too.’

‘Yes, I should like that; but you distract me,’ she chided, smiling. ‘I found a poem which seemed most apt for you and Captain Peto.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes,’ she continued, smiling more, ‘called simply “Discipline”.’