Ellis Peters - George Felse 09 - Mourning Raga (18 page)

‘Come farther,’ urged Shantila, quaking, ‘come to the trees. There he won’t see us.’

They took the left-hand path, which stretched straight ahead from the gate, because it led to groves where they could lurk in cover and still watch the gateway. They walked now, though in haste and with many glances behind, stumbling a little from pure weariness of spirit rather than of body. They passed the rosy, petrified fruit the giant’s child had dropped, a pomegranate full of white steps for seeds. The most awe-inspiring of all Jai Singh’s immense conceptions hung over them. They saw it from this angle as a lofty needle of stone, sailing sheer out of the ground for nearly sixty feet, with a round drum of stone on the top. It looked like a monolith, but as they hurried forward they drew alongside it, and saw that this sheer face was actually the shortest side of a right-angled triangle laid on its edge. Upwards by the hypotenuse, breathtakingly steep, a lady in a sari was proceding towards the summit, plodding stolidly, a flutter of blue and white silk. One more staircase for all game tourists to climb, the most daunting of them all. The containing walls that protected her scarcely reached her knees. At the top there was no handrail at all round the sheer drop of nearly sixty feet, and perhaps two feet of clearance all round the stone drum.

Anjli stumbled towards the bushes and sanctuary, suddenly terribly tired, oppressed even more by these unforeseen and incomprehensible marvels than by her own half-digested experiences. She had not the least idea that she was staring at the monumental gnomon of one of the biggest sundials in the world, Jai Singh’s ‘Prince of Dials’. If someone had tried to explain it to her then, she would not have understood. She was very close to the limit of her forces, and only too deeply aware that Shantila, loyal and loving as she might be, could not help her any more. They had reverted to their basic simplicity. It was a long time since Anjli had felt herself a child.

In the green coolness and dimness under the trees, themselves hidden, they found a seat where they could watch the gate. A few people came and went, but several of them were gardeners. Always, in Indian gardens, there are almost more gardeners than visitors. Anjli sat forward and cradled her head in her arms until her breath came more easily; and a terrible drowsiness laid hold of her and smoothed her eyelids closed.

Shantila’s sharp little elbow stabbed her side. She heard the first indrawn breath of panic. ‘He has come! He knows we are here!’

Anjli jerked up her head and rose to peer tensely through the leaves. There was no mistake. The incongruous head, short black hair still ruffled from under the wig of Old Age, cheeks marked by round grey patches of make-up and forehead seamed with false wrinkles, leaned forward like a hound on a scent, probing down this very path which they had chosen as a way to safety.

They clung together, hesitating far too long. If they had run at once, clean across between the instruments to the other side of the garden, they could have got back to the gate unobserved. Even if they had withdrawn a few yards farther into cover, hiding among the gardeners’ delicately concealed tools and compost, they might have escaped his notice. But they were at the end of their resources, and having waited too long, they took hands and ran, across the gigantic approach to the gnomon, there to hesitate again in the shelter of the stone walls, waiting to see him pass them on the path he had chosen. He did not pass. He had seen them flash across the open in their unmistakable blue and white, and had lingered slyly under the sheer face of the tower, edging his way round to the other side, from which they would not be expecting him.

Aware of their nakedness, they had stopped to creep into the first steps of the great staircase, hoping to be hidden from either side. It was the worst thing they could have done. Suddenly he was there, not ten yards away from them, poised to intercept them whichever way they ran; and in order to run at all they had first to break free from the low, containing walls, for they were crouching some few steps from the ground.

Reason no longer had any part in what they did. There was only one way they could retreat from him and remain out of reach, and there was no power left in either of them to reckon for how long. Every moment free of his grasp counted. They bargained only for that, seconds of freedom; beyond there was nothing certain. As he lurched towards the foot of the staircase they scrambled to their feet and ran from him, frantically, frenziedly, up the steps with all the breath and all the muscular force they had, utterly reckless of things which in any other circumstances would have halted them with horror. There was just room for two people to pass on those steps. The walls at the sides scarcely reached their knees. The gradient, though of this they had no idea, was approximately one in two. Below, there was nothing but hot white concrete waiting to receive them. They looked up, and nowhere else. Nothing else was possible. There was not a single person moving, up or down, on all those white steps, except themselves. There was no one warily circling the stone drum on the summit. There was no one left in the world but themselves, and the man who had begun, with hideous leisureliness, to follow them up the gnomon.

There was no railing, there on top. Thousands of unsuspecting children climbed these stairs every year, how many played too confidingly around the stone drum on the top? It was nearly as tall as a man, taller than these two girls. Parents might lose sight of their daring offspring, it needed only a little scuffle – children have no idea of danger. How thoughtful of them, how thoughtful, to provide this way out! One of them or both, what did it matter? If the vital one went, the other would be too terrified to cause any further trouble. She was, after all, his elder brother’s posthumous daughter. And she had no money, no allies, no power… not like the other one. No, let Amrita keep her if it worked out that way. Why not? Neither of them would ever dare to point a finger at him. As for him, that other, how easy to give orders and sit back and stay immune! Let him do what he liked, he had no weapons that would not turn against himself. Next time let him do his own dirty work, and find his way out of his own traps. This was the last time Govind Das meant to carry another man’s burden!

And no one following up here. No one. Perfect!

He might have to carry Shantila down the steps. No matter, she would not be any trouble, once the other was gone. That one, with her fine clothes, and her confidence, and her way of looking that was not Indian, not Western, but something between, something unique, a manner all her own, native and strange – everywhere native, everywhere strange. He wondered about that parentage of hers. He had never seen her sire. That had been a weakness, for surely she was her father’s daughter.

They were slowing now, blown and aching from the long, steep climb. Take it easily now, there must be no violent action to be seen on the skyline here, nothing but gentleness, nothing but family affection suddenly ruptured by tragedy. He could not look down now, he was too high. Fifty feet can seem so much more, without a handrail, with only two feet of level ground between you and space.

Slowly, step by step, there was no haste, since there was no way out.

On the last few stairs they were reeling and fumbling with exhaustion, and the man was only a few steps behind. Anjli groped her way ahead, one hand reaching back for Shantila’s hand, but often missing it, sweat running down into her eyebrows and lashes, stinging her lips, sickening her. Only to put that stone cone between herself and her enemy, even if there was nothing to hold by, and no way of evading him in the end. Her cleanness, her personality, depended on eluding his touch. There were no other ambitions left to her.

She saw as in a dream the marvellous panorama of Jai Singh’s vision from this altitude, and the quiet stretch of Parliament Street outside the wall, beyond the silvery palms. She saw the ripe, rosy fruit at her feet, hemmed with flowers, and the mysterious castle towers behind, spinning on their white central columns, dovecotes for stars. Then, only just behind her, she heard Shantila stumble and fall, clinging to the edge of the step, sobbing with frustration. She turned, reaching to help her up; and past the little heaving body her enemy stepped triumphantly, a hand already reaching out for her.

Shantila saw in the corner of her eye the deliberate foot climbing past her, saw it poised to touch the step above, saw the confident, greedy hand extended. With all the strength she had left she clenched both her hands in the string of her necklace, and tugged the cord apart. A sharp stab of pain seared her throat, beads of blood sprang along the wound and spilled among the Scottish beads. The pebbles from the Cairngorms spurted and danced across the white steps, bouncing, twirling, hard and round and adamant, merry as marbles in a game and double as dangerous. She heard them ring tiny, hard, gay notes of music, cannoning off one another, diverting one another, filling the whole width of the staircase with the irresponsible gaiety of murder. She actually saw Govind Das set his foot squarely upon no less than three of them. But it was the easy leaning forward, the disarrangement of his weight, which actually disposed of him.

The beads rolled, seeking a way downwards, safe enough in any fall. They spilled him forward on his face; his feet went out from under him, and the hand reaching confidently for Anjli’s arm missed by inches, and groped helplessly upon the air, baulked of any resting place. He tried to swing his weight and recover his balance, and the only effect was to turn him towards the abyss from which he had climbed, and fling him face-forwards into it. He hurtled past Shantila on the downward road, and she saw his face intent, puzzled, hopeful, still wrestling for balance and incontinent after life, a young man’s face incredulous of disaster, certain of salvation. But afraid, afraid, inhumanly afraid! Shantila was fortunate, for she had no terms in which to describe what she had seen, and no one was ever going to demand of her that she should find words for it. It is possible to forget what you have never formulated.

As for Anjli, she never saw it. All she saw was the beads rolling, the foot betrayed, the balance lost, and all this in a moment of time. She stood frozen, unable to withdraw from the hand which nevertheless failed utterly to touch her. From stair to stair, derisively, the Cairngorm pebbles rolled inviolable, skittishly evading every attempt Govind Das made to recover his equilibrium. From stair to stair they bounced happily, like water seeking their own level, oblivious of the plunging, lurching feet that fought in vain for a firm foothold. And after a moment he outran his destroyers, lunging, falling, leaping endlessly downwards, first running, then rolling, then bouncing like a thrown ball, then tossed like a rag-doll, arms and legs flying, bones cracking, an inarticulate thing coursed interminably down the hundred feet of one-in-two slope towards the concrete ground which was the home level, the final goal.

Far down the long white slide the fore-shortened figure of a man had begun to climb after them. They saw him only now, and cried out together in alarm and despair, for how could he possibly evade the grotesque projectile that was hurtling down upon him? He had come too far up the steps to be able to retreat and leap out of the way. He threw himself down, flattened along the stairs with braced feet under the one bordering wall, an arm flung over the rim to anchor him. Nothing could now have arrested the flight of Govind Das. His flailing body struck the tensed bow of Girish’s shoulders, and rebounded on to the crest of the opposite wall, sliding helplessly down it for several feet before the uncontrolled weight dragged it over the edge, to fall with a dull half-liquid sound on the bone-white concrete below.

Girish took his head out of his arms, and levered himself up from the steps. There was no more sound from below, and no more movement.

‘Be careful!’ called Anjli’s anxious voice from above him. “The beads… on the stairs…’

Then he saw them, one by one gently trickling down towards their own level, unbruised, adamant, the coloured pebbles from the mountains at the other end of the world. He met and passed them on his way upwards, and gathered the ones that came most easily to hand, so that no one else should mount here and accidentally follow Govind Das to his death. But many eluded him, for all the real passion of his senses and his heart was fixed on the children. Slowly they crept down to meet him, Anjli in front, one hand stretched back to clasp the hand of her friend. She felt her way from step to step with the methodical movements of exhaustion, when you cannot afford a first mistake because it may well be your last. Her face was pale and clear, almost empty as yet because fear had so recently quitted it and left it virgin. Her eyes, immense, so bruised with experience that they might have been darkened with kohl in the native way, clung unwaveringly to his face.

They were above the midway mark when they met. Anjli took her hand gently from Shantila’s hand, so that she could join her palms on her breast in the proper reverence.

‘Namaste!’

He held out his arms, and she walked almost shyly into them, and he kissed her forehead. They came down the steps together all linked in a chain of three, Girish in front for a barrier against any fear they might still feel of lesser things, now that the great fear was gone, Anjli’s right hand in his and her left hand in Shantila’s. They came slowly, because none of them was in haste now, and none of them was free of the great, clouding lassitude of achievement that hung upon this denouement. They must have heard the voices below, they must have seen the curious gathering at last, too late to be helpful, in time to be in the way. From nowhere someone had conjured two police officers. Through the gates an ambulance was driving. It had failed to find a victim upon the scene of the road accident in Parliament Street, but it would not go back empty-handed from here.

And there were other faces, faces Anjli knew well and some she did not know, but clearly all united in this moment, gathering there at the foot of the steps to welcome her back among them. Dominic, and Tossa, and Mr Felder, all radiant with relief, and an elderly, ascetic gentleman with a saffron robe and a shaven skull and lop-sided spectacles, gently beaming in the background, and an immaculate person in exclusive tailoring, who by his contented smile was clearly also a member of the alliance. She had never realised she had so many friends here. Find one, and you have the key to many more.