City of Bells (28 page)

             
He paused.  “Burning people from their homes was a favorite trick of the rebels.   The farmhouses we had passed had all been burned or partially so, with the slain bodies in the yard, the women and children shot or hacked to death as they tried to escape the flames.  And so when I smelled smoke, I ran.  Ran out the door and to the cart.”

             
“With two of the children.”

             
“No,” Weaver said.  “No.  If honesty is the price I must pay for my sins, then at least let me pay it in full.  Roland thrust two of the children in my direction.  Put them into my arms and then…I sat them back down, I believe.  Dropped them, threw them, placed them gently in their beds…this I cannot tell you.  Only that I discarded the children in some manner and then I ran.  Had I reached the pony cart first, I further assure you that would have deserted them all. It was panic.  I cannot begin to describe my impulse, much less defend it.”

             
Rayley struggled not to let emotion show on his face.  After all, he was trying to maintain the fiction that Felix had shared far more of the story than he actually had.  So it would not do to rail or shout at the old fop, a man so calmly describing an act of the most appalling cowardice that it was as if he were reading a scene from a book.

             
“It was Sang who must have picked two children back up,” Weaver continued.  “An infant and a little girl of about five or six years. How he managed to carry the both of them and still make it to the pony cart at the same time as me that I did, I cannot say. Plus he had been grazed with a shot.  There was blood on his shirt, blood which had seeped through onto the blanket which wrapped the baby. It was my initial thought that the child was the one hurt.  No matter. During the entire event it was as if Sang moved with an almost supernatural strength and purpose, or perhaps it was just more that my own reactions were dulled by shock. What was happening in the house we had left behind, I cannot tell you.  Roland and Mrs. Sloane presumably tried to steer the other children toward safety.  I can only state that when I arrived at the cart Sang was right on my heels.  He put the children in the back and turned again toward the house, but by then…” 

             
Another pause, another sip of water. 

             
“By then they were engulfed,” Weaver finally said.  “I stood up in the bed of the cart, and saw it all.  Mrs. Sloane run through, along with the toddler she was carrying in her arms.  A single thrust for them both, quite expedient.  The oldest child, a boy of maybe seven?  Eight?  He got quite far on his own, to the edge of the yard before they caught him.  And Roland….he emerged through the door last, which is just as of course it would be.  Of course he would ensure that the others were out of the burning house before he would leave it, and he saw Mrs. Sloane and the child dying there in the yard, the small boy slain in the corner.  Saw them at once, of course, and the horror of it was so complete that for a moment he froze.”

             
“As for what he was thinking, how much he understood…” Weaver said, “I am not entirely sure.  And if you think I am a heartless creature for telling you this story with dry eyes and a steady voice, let me assure you that this calmness is borne only of repetition. I have relived this morning in my mind every day of my life, Detective.  Some version of it, at least.  Memory is a rather imperfect vehicle, even when not further hampered by guilt, and each time I recall the scene, it is a little different.  Did Roland look at me, there in the farmyard, at that moment when he knew his death was imminent?  Did he see me standing in the cart, did he know that I was on the verge of deserting the lot of them?”  Weaver shrugged.  “Most likely he did not, and this image that I carry, his expression of disgust and condemnation, is entirely the fruit of my own imagination.  For the yard was utter bedlam, you see.  Roland was struck from behind.  The child he was carrying, the fifth little Sloane, tumbled from his arms.  I do not know what happened to it.  Nothing good, I suppose.”

             
Rayley was too stunned by this matter-of-fact description of hell to respond.  The two men sat for some time in an utter silence, broken only by a far-away tinkling of some sort of bell.

             
“You condemn me,” Weaver finally said. 

             
“I could not have done it,” Rayley said.

             
“How can any man say what he would do or not do in the heat of such a moment?”

             
Rayley looked at the notes in his lap, pretending to be absorbed in the words written on the paper, which actually swam before his eyes.  Weaver’s statement was true enough.  He had never been in war, never found himself caught up in a slaughter of the sort that Weaver described.   Whenever he arrived at a crime scene, the danger was always passed.

             
“I cannot say I would never panic and run,” he finally answered with honestly.  “But the moment you describe, the one where you stood in the cart and looked back over the farmyard… The moment when you saw your best friend engulfed…”

             
“You believe you would have reentered the fray.  That if it were Welles on point of sword, you would go back.”

             
“I do.”

             
“And yet he surpasses you,” Weaver said.  “Stands above you in importance, just as Roland did me.  I cannot think why this would be – my brief experience with the two of you suggests you may possess the finer mind – so I can only imagine that certain twists of fate have been unkind to you in the same way they were unkind to me.  Your Hebrew faith, perhaps?  Or some other accident of birth?” 

             
Weaver waited a moment for a confirmation which Rayley did not provide, and then continued.   “Roland and I first met as schoolfellows, you know.  He was two years older, a prefect when I was a mere novice, and he was remained just that, always a step ahead.  He was the one with the perfect marks, the admirable post, the heavier insignia on his jacket, a larger house – “

             
“And Rose.”

             
“And Rose.  Of course there was always the issue of Rose.  I was lost the minute I saw her.  Her beauty, of course, and that extraordinary delicacy.  It is easy for a young man, inexperienced with women, to misread such fragility as proof of something finer.  To convince himself that there is some sort of magic within which much be shielded at all costs.”

             
“But she was married when you met her.  To your superior and to your friend.”

             
Weaver nodded thoughtfully.  “You know, for years I told myself that I wanted Rose despite the fact she was Roland’s wife but in moments of self-truth - those rare kinds you sometimes find in the bottom of the brandy bottle - I admit that it was more likely I wanted her not despite but precisely because he had her first.”  Weaver looked at Rayley with challenging eyes.  “Is your own superior and friend Trevor Welles married, Detective Abrams?”

             
“No.  And neither am I.”

             
“Then that particular Rubicon of masculine friendship has yet to be crossed.  But still you seem quite certain you would turned back and tried to save him, would have joyfully rushed into the very jaws of death, all in the name of loyalty.  Do you believe that he would do the same for you?”

             
Rayley nodded.  “I am even more certain of that.”

             
“Then you would both be dead, along with the two innocent children and the noble manservant.  If you will pardon the observation, Detective, for two rational men that is a highly irrational response.”

             
“So you would have me believe you were motivated more by pragmatism than by cowardice.”

             
Weaver shrugged.  “Believe what you wish.  As I said, even my own interpretation of this most central day of my life has shifted over time and my self-condemnation has risen and fallen like an ocean tide.  I only know this: By the time Sang and I reached the pony cart, Mrs. Sloane and her remaining three children and Roland were all either dead or dying.  To rush back in at that point would have only raised the death toll.  Even Sang understood the cruel realities of the situation.  He turned toward the burning farmhouse – and then he turned back.  Leapt into the back of the cart with the blood seeping through his shirt and we were off.”

             
“How did you manage to return to Bombay when the rebels had cut the roads?” Rayley asked, pointedly moving the discussion along.  For Weaver was right about one thing.  There was no point in imagining what he would have done, or speculating on how he and Trevor might better handle such an impossible situation.   The reality was the here and now – not only Weaver’s confession, but the light his words were shedding on so many things that happened later.

             
“As luck would have it, not all the roads were cut,” Weaver said.  “Presumably the mutineers who had been ambushing travelers were part of the same murderous crew who had descended on the farmhouse.  While they were busy slaughtering the people they found there, we escaped.  I cannot claim to remember much about the trip back.  The cries of the children, the heat of the day….”  Weaver shook his head.  “But perhaps that is all just another fancy.  I can tell you this.  The farther I drove the more certain I became that no one could ever know I was at Cawnpore.  The confusion of that time, Detective, with such terror and so much death…   It worked to my advantage.   No one knew exactly where anyone was, men were deserting their posts left and right to search for their families, people were dashing about looking for protection….”

             
“You did not enter Bombay at all, did you?”

             
Weaver took another drink of water, gave another cough.  “I pulled over in the shadow of the city gates,” he said.  “Told Sang I would look after him.  Him and his family forever and ever, just as Sahib Everlee would have wanted me to do.  He knew at once what I was saying.  He was a clever man.  Or perhaps he was just intuitive, in the way dark-skinned people so often are.  He alone drove the children through the gates of the city, all the while proclaiming tales of the noble Roland Everlee, and I lost myself in the shadows of a barroom outside the wall, accompanied by a handful of other deserters. When I emerged into the light a few days later, I beheld a different world.”

             
“Sang took the children to the home of Rose Everlee?”

             
“I suppose.  What else would he have done?”

             
“You suppose?  You never asked what happened to them later?”

             
“Why should I?  You must remember that my official story was that I had never laid eyes on the Sloane children, but rather traveled with my unit directly to Cawnpore.”  Weaver coughed.  “I believe Rose said they were shipped back to England.  Some distant relative doubtlessly took them in.”

             
“Doubtlessly,” Rayley said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in his voice.  Did Weaver really expect him to believe he had sent the children to his lover’s care and yet the two of them had never discussed what became of those children?  But he decided to press on, at least for the moment, to other matters.  “I understand that Rose was carrying Everlee’s child when he died?”

             
“She was.”

             
“And that after she gave birth to her son Michael, you married her? Sang remained in the household?”

             
“Just as you say.”

             
“That must have been most difficult.  Living year after year with a man who knew the truth about your behavior on that dreadful day.  How could you bear the reproach in his eyes?”

             
“Easily, because there was none,” Weaver said.  “There is something in their Hindu religion, I believe, that makes the Indians see the past in a different way than we do.  They behold time as circular rather than linear and, oddly enough, this belief seems to free them from a duty to remember.  Sang never harked back to the day we put the children in the cart, not in a single word or gesture.  The only reproach I had to bear was in the eyes of the man I saw each morning in my shaving mirror.”  Weaver wiped his forehead again.   “I have spent the last thirty-two years attempting to atone for the impulse of a single moment.  I raised Roland’s son with every advantage. I shielded his wife from any realties which might have proven impossible to bear.  And I kept Sang and his relatives in comfort.  Does any of that erase the past?  Of course it does not, Detective, and yet it is the truth.”

             
Rayley had little doubt of this.  No man would make up such a self-damning story, even one with the gallows in sight.  And it explained so much – Weaver’s willingness to take on the tedious Rose and her tedious son, Sang’s elevated status within the Weaver household, Weaver’s palpable self-loathing, which was perhaps strong enough to push him into a dependency on opium….

             
Ah yes.  The opium.  Rayley made another effort to pull his thoughts back to the present and changed tack again.