Authors: Kim Wright
She will not make the same mistake twice.
Chapter Nineteen
Cawnpore
11:20 AM
Upon their arrival at the base of Cawnpore, everyone scrambled from the carts. There was no official host or hostess to oversee the outing, so it would have been a dreadful thrash had the servants not proven so admirably efficient.
Within minutes of the approach of the final cart, they had unloaded the tent on the dusty flat at the bottom of the hill and within a few more minutes, there was a canopy billowing in the breeze, offering shade. Hampers with food followed, and a grand block of ice, unwrapped from a white cloth and slid into a shallow tray. Emma shuddered at the very sight of it. She looked around for Amy, but did not see her. Walking with Tom, perhaps?
After the long ride, Emma found she needed to take a walk of her own. She pulled away from the chattering group and looked about for some privacy. There was likely to be a tent for this purpose as well, a much smaller little enclave of dark muslin with a chamber pot inside, and although she found the pieces of the traveling W.C. easily enough, no one had yet turned a hand to assembling it. Emma sighed and looked up toward the hill. She would have to improvise.
***
The servants set up the long table, positioned the ice, and then unpacked the food. Through a sort of tacit arrangement, the woman who had provided each dish stepped forward to claim her contribution and to arrange the plate as she saw fit. Geraldine, who lacked a kitchen – and indeed any inclination to cook even if she had been given access to Mrs. Tucker’s – had supplied a variety of breads from a shop she had been assured was the finest patisserie within Bombay. It was likely the only patisserie in Bombay, she reflected, as she fanned the croissants, slices of yeast bread, and poppyseed rolls out across a tray. For the thousandth time since coming to India, she gave silent thanks that such silly ceremonies were not part of her daily life. Back in London she had her cook and butler Gage to deal with the soul-numbing details of entertaining friends. And the women of the Raj of course had their servants as well – even the middle class boasting a far greater contingent than anyone would expect, thanks to the plethora of locals willing to work for a shilling. Yet it would seem that the local standard was for the memsahibs to at least pretend to have produced the food they brought to picnics and other Byculla Club socials. For they now fluttered around the tables, no doubt interrupting the legitimate servants from their legitimate work, all of them making a great fuss over their individual dishes.
We have come at great effort to Cawnpore,
Geraldine thought, brushing back a strand of hair with a floury hand,
and yet, now that we are here, it would seem that the entire group is determined to ignore Cawnpore. For here we all stand at the base of the hill, at the very foot of the ruined fortress, and yet none of our party has made a move to go higher. We busy ourselves with the mechanics of the picnic, and thus delay the moment when we climb up to see the crumbling walls, the plaques embedded in them and, most of all, the well. The well where so many people died for the crime of…
For the crime of being just like us,
she concluded, giving up on arranging the tray in any artful fashion and stepping back from the table.
The crime of being white, and foreign, and careless with this power which was conferred upon us, so random and so unearned.
Leigh Anne Hoffman, perhaps in acknowledgement that she had brought the greatest number of guests to the picnic, had also brought the largest offering of food. An enormous pot of what – if her olfactory senses had not failed her – Geraldine took to be curry. Such a dish would have to be reheated after the journey, which made it a defiantly illogical choice for a picnic. Now the woman supervised the building of a small fire just outside the tent and the lowering of a large black pot within the nest of smoldering embers. Miss Hoffman was drawing a disparate amount of attention, effort, and native manpower to her task of readying the curry, which Geraldine suspected was somewhat the point.
“Look at me,” the simmering brew all but shouted. “Along a table groaning with the weight of aspic salads, roasted chickens, and lemon cakes, I shall stand alone. An unapologetically Indian dish, and no one shall dare to imply that I am out of place here.” Leigh Anne Hoffman’s food was a reflection of the woman herself: Determined to be outrageous. Miss Hoffman crouched before the fire which warmed her angry curry, poking resolutely at the embers with a stick.
And nearly hidden within the folds of the nearest tent, Gerry further noted, stood Miss Hoffman’s most intriguing student. Adelaide. Neither moving, talking, working, or even taking note of her surroundings. Simply watching and waiting as her headmistress prepared the curry. Any number of unwrapped baskets of food and chilled tins of beverages were clustered around the woman’s feet, making her seem as if she were almost trapped by the excessive bounty of the picnic.
We must get Adelaide apart and talk to her,
Gerry thought.
But it shan’t be an easy task as long as Miss Hoffman is close. For she does seem to view the woman as her pet puppy…and she keeps her on a very short leash.
***
“You want a beer?” Morass said, gesturing toward the tin bucket he had lugged from the pony cart, and which now was wedged between his feet. He had broken a bit off from the activity of the picnic and Tom had wandered after him until the two men were out of earshot, considerably downwind from the others, who smoked and paced and stole periodic glances at the ruins.
“I am always in want of a beer,” Tom answered, honestly enough. “Is it cold?”
“And would it matter so much, if I said it wasn’t? Would you wander your way down to the next pub where conditions are better?”
Tom laughed, for the man was right. They had been cast out on a flat and sandy plain, with nothing to tempt the eye or offer comfort. There was indeed a breeze, this much he had to acknowledge, for the breezes were the reason the Raj most often gave for fleeing the city for the country. And yes, the air did blow, although it carried any manner of dust and leaves along with it.
“Perhaps I should wait until after the food has been served,” Tom said.
Morass shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m near to the bottom of this jug as it is, although there are two more waiting by the tent.”
“Where is Seal?” Tom asked. “He seems to have disappeared the minute our processional stopped.”
“Stuck to Michael Everlee like silkweed to trousers,” Morass said, with a jerk of his thumb toward the hill behind him. “They’re a fine pair, are they not? It would seem that since Benson got himself killed that our Mr. Everlee has decided to change his approach. Decided to work with the Viceroy rather than the military.”
Well, that explained the man’s dark mood. The fact he was drinking hard and early. The money had dried up. Michael Everlee must have quite sensibly concluded that Benson had extracted all the information from Morass that the military side of the investigation had to give, and changed his focus to cooperating with the Viceroy. Tom pushed back the brim of his hat and studied the ruins. He could indeed see three men working their way slowly up the broken steps leading to the crumbling fortress gate: Seal leading the way, Everlee following in a bizarre bright gold jacket, and lastly a man Tom could not name, but who he remembered from the Byculla Club dinner. The old deaf one who had been so insistent that Everlee must come to Cawnpore to view the plaque laid in honor of his true father.
“You think I drink too much, do you?”
Tom turned back to Morass, startled by this sudden shift in tone.
“I do not judge you, my friend. It is usually the job of others, in fact, to tell me that I drink too much.”
“Yet you turned away from my offer of beer.”
“Only until after luncheon. It is my only rule.” Tom shut his eyes and saw his brother Cecil’s face floating in the speckled darkness. Cecil the Troubled, that should be the man’s moniker should he ever, God forbid, find himself at the helm of an empire. At what point in time had Cecil began drinking before noon and had that truly been the start of his moral demise?
Morass studied him through red-rimmed eyes. “And who set this rule?”
“I suppose I set it myself,” said Tom. In order to cover his unease, he again shifted the subject. “How did you and Davy come along with the fingerprinting tutorial?”
But Morass was not mollified. “You find this amusing, that I wished to learn such a skill?”
Tom sighed and decided to leave the man to his self-pity and his beer. Something told him this was going to be a very long day.
But when he looked back toward the ruins, he noted with surprise that he could now see the figure of Emma on the hill as well, picking her cautious way down the rubble from another direction. She was wearing a brilliantly white blouse and skirt that he had seen her in several times before – she had bought the outfit before their sail to Russia at the beginning of the summer, based on her charmingly naïve assumption that grand ladies always wore white at sea. The soot-belching engines of the Queen’s yacht had soon taught the girl that wearing her cherished new garb was more of a romantic affectation that a practical choice of travel clothing, but Emma had made the precise same mistake here today. For Tom suspected that the decision to wear starched white clothing to a dusty ruin would shortly reveal itself to be an even greater sartorial mistake, if it hadn’t already. Emma was also carrying a large parasol in a bluish-green color, which she had tilted to protect herself from the sun, and Tom wondered where she had gone on her own, so far from the others, and if she might lose her footing on the way back. He should go and help her.
“I do not judge you in any way, man, I assure you,” Tom said to Morass. “And I have no doubt that the two of us shall share a brew soon enough. But in the meantime, might I ask you…Where is the plaque bearing tribute to Roland Everlee’s sacrifice actually located?”
“In the most important spot in all of Cawnpore,” Morass said, turning the tin jug up and shaking the final drops into his cup. “At the bloody well.”
***
The fat man in the lemon-colored suit must be her brother. She watches him from the shade of a tent canopy as he climbs up the hill with two other men. Important men, evidently - at least that would be her guess based on their clothing - and by the way they are all waving about their arms, she can only conclude that they are making important speeches as they walk.
There can be little doubt that this is Simon – or rather Michael Everlee, and he lives in London, far away from this dusty and inconsequential place. Oxford, Covant Gardens, Savile Row, even the Houses of Parliament…the components of her brother’s city life mean very little to her. They are nothing but pictures in a book she’s seen once or twice, places that she understands to be centers of power. Men’s power, white power, English power. The shrieking baby thrown so carelessly into a cart thirty-two years ago has grown into a man of influence, one declared to have a promising future.
She tilts her head and considers the figure above her. He is walking up the hill with a surprisingly slow and unsteady gait for one so young. She wonders if she likes him. He is the only true relative she has in the world and her heart surprised her by leaping at the first sight of him. His face is strangely familiar – not just from the pictures he has studied in the Weaver household, but also because it prompts memories of her father. A face once only dimly recalled, but now the indulgent smile of her dear Da comes back to her in a rush, and she is suddenly weak, clutching the insubstantial cloth wall of the tent in an effort to steady herself.
The men are almost up the hill. They are climbing, it would appear, to the heart of the ruins, to the infamous well which now bears a plaque in honor of Roland Everlee. Roland Everlee, the hero of Cawnpore, the man her brother believes is his father. A thought occurs to her and for a moment it gives her pause. It would seem that of the two of them, Michael is the one who was given everything, but she does have one thing which he likely, for all his fine clothes and fashionable houses, will never possess.
She has the truth.
Her hands steal down her sides, the palms running over her rough clothing. The money waits in one pocket. The glass dropper waits in another. Her fingers close resolutely around it, her thumb running nervously over the rubber plug. She must not grow sentimental. She must not fall down her own well of memory, for she has other business here in Cawnpore. Serious business.