“Lay down your weapons,” the strange voice commanded the bearers, “or he dies.”
“Run, fools!” Padji cried. “Take her away. I die for—”
“No!” Amanda cried, before the bearers could move. “Do as the pig says.”
“A wise woman,” the voice said softly. “Down on your knees, my elephant,” he told Padji.
“I kneel to no thieving pig. Cut my throat, then, fool, and the others will fall upon you.”
“No!” Amanda screamed.
Too late. Silver gleamed as it swept through the air, and Padji crumpled to the ground. Instantly, the bearers set down their burden. To Amanda’s amazement, the intrepid attacker fled, pursued by four shrieking avengers.
Amanda pushed open the palanquin shutters and scrambled out. She stared at the dark heap on the ground.
“Oh, Padji,” she whispered. Shaking in every limb, she crept towards him. Gingerly, she reached out to his shoulder, then jerked her hand back. What was she thinking of? The thief must have cut his throat. He’d be covered with blood ... sticky ... ghastly.
She scuttled back hastily, struggling to control the spasm of nausea. One ... two ... three deep breaths. Then she looked about her, while her heart seemed to pound in her ears. She was not far from home. Even if she could have endured touching the body, she certainly could not carry it with her. She returned to the palanquin and quickly collected her belongings.
The robber had chosen the site well. Large gardens sprawled on either side of the dark, narrow passageway’s high walls. The houses’ inhabitants were too far away to hear cries for help. Normally, the gates at both ends of the passage were kept locked. Tonight, though, with virtually all Calcutta’s upper crust at the rani’s celebration, it must have been more convenient to leave the way open. Or else the thief had broken in. Alone? Amanda glanced anxiously about her. A risky business for one man, wasn’t it?
She held her breath, but the only sounds she made out came from a great distance: hoofbeats and voices. Nearby she heard only her own heart thundering.
Clutching her awkward bundles to her, she hiked up the skirts of her sari, ran blindly to the end of the passage, and turned the corner.
A dark form swept out of a gateway, a hand covered her mouth, another wrapped round her waist and dragged her backwards into the shadows.
“Drop it.”
To her shock, it was the same voice she’d heard only minutes before.
She dropped the lacquered jewel box, then drove her elbow into her attacker’s stomach and tore away from him. A foot shot out, tripping her. She stumbled, and the packet of silks slid out from under her arm. Still tightly clutching the Laughing Princess, Amanda regained her balance, only to be hauled up against the robber’s body. The hand closed over her mouth again, choking her.
“Drop it, curse you!” he gasped.
Amanda squirmed, frantically trying to break free of the suffocating embrace. One strong hand pressed painfully over her mouth. The other crushed her rib cage. She stomped on his foot, pushed, kicked, and elbowed, all the while clutching the sandalwood figure as though it were her firstborn. That was all she wanted. Why wouldn’t he take the rest and let her go? But he was pulling at her hands now.
Again she jammed madly with her elbow. This time he abruptly released her, and her own force unbalanced her. She fell against him, felt him dropping with her. They crashed to the ground . . . and she found herself pinned beneath him.
“Foolish woman,” he said, panting. While the weight of his hard body held her down, he began prying her fingers loose from the figure.
“No!” she shrieked, as he wrenched the statue from her grasp. “You bastard! No!”
There was a heartbeat’s pause, and Amanda realised she’d cried out in English.
“A thousand pardons, memsahib,” he said.
Then he leapt to his feet... and vanished into the night with the Laughing Princess.
White hot, it churned round her, blinding her: Rage. Amanda dragged herself up onto her knees and screamed, “You filthy bastard! You bloody, thieving swine!” Silence answered. She pounded her fists into the dirt in impotent fury.
Something else pounded, somewhere beyond the vast, surrounding wall of rage. Footsteps? She raised her head, just as a figure staggered into the narrow entryway.
“Oh, missy, what has that pig done to you? Fiend. A hell-fiend. We will find him. We will tear him in pieces and rip out his heart while it yet beats. We will—”
“Padji?” she croaked, disbelieving.
He fell to his knees beside her. “Aye, it is Padji, the worthless slave who has failed you.” He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, repeatedly, while he muttered inarticulate lamentations.
Amanda pulled her hand away. “You’re alive,” she said. “I thought he’d murdered you.”
“A blow only. Haifa breath’s less force and I should not have sunk under it. A moment less in blackness and I should have caught him and killed him, and thrown his polluted head at your feet. Ah, we have been tricked, and it is my folly. Aiyeeeeeee,” he wailed. “I am a dead man.”
“Do be quiet,” Amanda snapped. “There’s no point staying here moaning about it. We’ve got to get home.”
The servants were all abed, and Roderick and Eustacia were still out when Amanda and Padji reached the house. This was exceedingly fortunate, for Roderick would have made an international incident out of the attack—after, that is, his wife had finished dropping in and out of fourteen fits of hysterics.
Mrs. Gales, Amanda’s companion, possessed a less turbulent disposition. A tall, ample-figured woman in her mid-forties, the auburn-haired widow had small use for emotional displays. India was a treacherous, incomprehensible place, and the natives were, in general, demented. If one made a fuss about every objectionable episode that occurred, one would live in a constant state of fuss. This, to Mrs. Gales’s mind, constituted a prodigious waste of time and energy.
Though distressed by her employer’s shocking experience, the widow perceived no reason to compound the unpleasantness with swoons or hysteria. Instead, she calmly advised Amanda to wash and change. Mrs. Gales meanwhile saw to Padii’s facial injuries in her usual efficient manner, ordered him to sit quietly in a corner, then set about making tea.
With the removal of grime and the resumption of proper English attire, Amanda discovered she didn’t look nearly as ghastly as she felt. Her modest yellow muslin frock concealed her few outer bruises. Her mouth was sore, her jaw ached, and her ribs felt as though she’d been run through a gristmill. Nonetheless, her looking glass showed nothing obviously amiss.
As she entered the parlour, she found Padji in a considerably more colourful state. His face was bruised and cut where the paving stones had scraped it, and a large lump had sprung up on the back of his head. The villain had aimed beautifully, he grimly admitted. The man had struck with the sword hilt just below the cushioning turban.
“Indeed, the fellow sounds remarkable,” said Mrs. Gales as she handed Padji a cup of tea. He shook his head and commenced to rocking to and fro in a melancholy manner. Mrs. Gales shrugged and placed the cup on the floor beside him.
“I can scarcely credit it,” she said to Amanda. “That one man should attack so large and well-armed a party. How could he have robbed you while he was running away from four bearers? There must have been two robbers at least”
Amanda shook her head. “It was the same one. He must have tricked them somehow, then doubled back for me.”
“So it was,” Padji grumbled. “A master of deceit. How did he know my mistress’s signal?”
Amanda put down her teacup and looked at him. “Is that what the strange bird sound was?” she asked. “Is that why you stopped?”
Padji covered his face with his hands. “I am a dead man. She will tear my tongue from my throat. She will flay my flesh and pour burning poison into the wounds. ‘Protect my daughter,’ she told me, and I foiled. She will bury me alive and sing curses over my
grave.”
“She’ll do no such thing,” Amanda said briskly. “The man merely robbed me. I wasn’t raped or murdered. Calcutta is filled with thieves. I shall send a note, explaining.”
“No!” he shrieked, jumping up. “You must not tell her. She will know soon enough. My mistress learns everything. But there is time. I will go with you on the ship, and when she discovers, I will be far away.”
“Go with us!” Mrs. Gales echoed. “Are you mad?”
“I must go. There is no place in all India I can hide. Her spies will find me out. They will put out my eyes with burning brands, because I was a blind man who did not see the Falcon as he swept down upon her beloved daughter. They will—”
“The Falcon?” Amanda cut in before he could commence another litany of horrors.
Padji covered his mouth with his hands.
Amanda rose from her chair and approached him. “That was the Falcon?”
“Forgive me, precious one. I am mad with grief. I know not what I say.”
“Do you not?” Amanda responded. “Very well. I shall send to the rani for servants to guide you back, lest you lose your way in your confusion.”
Padji fell to his knees before her. “No, missy, no, I pray you. She will make me die a thousand times.”
“Then tell me what the Falcon wanted with me. He might have taken the jewels and silks easily enough. Why did he want only the Laughing Princess?”
“O beloved of my mistress, there are matters I do not understand. I have followed her since I was a child, slept in mud and eaten maggots when I must, yet even to me she does not reveal everything.”
“If he wanted the statue, it must be of great value,” Amanda said.
“Aye, so he must have believed.” He raised his head to gaze at her. “You told me you dropped the box of jewels and the silks, but you fought him for the Laughing Princess. So what must he think, but that this statue is of the greatest value of all?”
“Damn,” Amanda said softly. Padji was right, of course. A cleverer woman—the princess, for instance—would have instantly dropped the object she most valued and fought over trinkets. Amanda had lost her most treasured gift because she’d let emotion rule instead of reason. “It is not others who betray us,” the rani had once told her, “but we who betray ourselves.”
Amanda had lost only a wooden statue, perhaps a hundred years old, perhaps much less. As antiquities went—and India was thick with them—the Laughing Princess’s monetary value was slight. To her, though, it was a piece of legend, a piece of India. More important, it was a gift of sentiment, the only treasure the rani’s false lover had left her, the only physical reminder of one brief, intense passion … and betrayal. It was a gift to her “daughter,” she had said. That word was perhaps dearest of all.
Amanda’s own mother had existed briefly, a figure in a haze, a beautiful princess forever locked in the prison of her own fairy tale world. Smoke... and incense...
Amanda shook herself out of her reverie to find her two companions staring at her.
“What’s done is done,” she said. “Perhaps it will turn up. If the thief was the Falcon, and if he’s as clever as reputed, he’ll realise the figure’s worthless and discard it. You may even find it on your way home,” she told Padji. “If, that is, your knees haven’t frozen into that position. Will you get up?”
“But I go with you,” he said, gazing up at her with misty brown eyes.
Amanda stared back incredulously.
“You most certainly do not;” Mrs. Gales said. Then, as though recollecting he was a native, and therefore congenitally irrational, she patiently explained, “We could never arrange your passage at this late date, even if Lord Cavencourt permitted it, which I strongly doubt. The end of our long war with Napoleon has left a great many former soldiers in need of employment. Lord Cavencourt cannot in good conscience pay a foreigner for what an English servant can do.”
“Unless, of course, the foreigner is French,” Amanda put in dryly, “and an excellent chef.”
“My dear girl, you know I never meant—”
“I know, Leticia, but that argument won’t wash.”
“I can cook,” Padji cried, still gazing soulfully up at Amanda, his hands now folded in supplication. “I am an excellent cook, even the English food.” He launched into a staggering list of his gastronomic accomplishments, down to the art of soft-boiling eggs.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said gently. “Truly—because I’ll miss you dreadfully. But even if we could arrange it—which I know we can’t—to take you would be most unwise, and not fair to you at all. This is your country. You’d hate England. It’s cold and damp, and many people will treat you unkindly because you’re a foreigner and your skin is dark.”
“I will be despised,” he said. “I will live as an untouchable, a leper. But I will serve you faithfully. And my mistress will not fill my mouth with scorpions and—”
“Lud, but you have the most ghastly imagination, Padji. Oh, will you get up? What are you thinking of, to be grovelling in this way, a great strong man like you?”
Padji rose. “Then you will take me with you?”
Amanda sighed. “The ship sails tomorrow. To arrange passage at the last minute requires a great deal of money and influence. That means my brother must arrange it, and I assure you he won’t.”
“But if it can be arranged, you will let me serve you?”
“It can’t be,” she answered, her gaze flickering from the huge Indian to Mrs. Gales. “Roderick would never permit it, let alone help.”
“Never fear, mistress, O beautiful and compassionate one, whose eyes burn with golden flames and—”
“Padji, you must- “
“Tomorrow. I will arrange it all, and tomorrow I will commence a new life, as your adoring slave.”
Oblivious to her half-hearted and Mrs. Gale’s emphatic protests, Padji commenced a speech on the thousand ways he’d serve his new mistress. He’d just begun soaring to improbable heights of self-sacrifice—the eating of flies being deemed somehow necessary to satisfactory service — when the Cavencourt carriage was heard at the gate. Padji promptly crawled out a window and escaped through the garden.
Chapter Three
Roderick accompanied his sister, her companion, and her maid on board ship, dutifully saw their belongings properly arranged, repeated for the hundredth time what Amanda must do upon reaching England, checked for the fiftieth time the papers entrusted to her, gave her a peck on the cheek, and departed.
Not ten minutes after he’d gone, one of the mates appeared, requesting Miss Cavencourt’s appearance in wardroom. The captain wished to speak with her.
“Miss Cavencourt has scarcely had time to catch her breath,” Mrs. Gales said reprovingly, with a glance at the weary, unhappy Amanda. “Is the matter so urgent it cannot wait?”
The man apologised, but declared they could not weigh anchor until the problem was resolved.
Alarmed and puzzled, Amanda went with him, Mrs. Gales following with stiff disapproval.
As soon as Amanda entered the wardroom, her heart sank. Beside Captain Blayton, Padji stood at proud attention.
“We have a problem, Miss Cavencourt,” said the captain after a brief, apologetic preamble. “In fact, we have had any number of problems in the last twelve hours,” he added irritably.
“I do hope Padji has not created difficulties for you, sir,” said Amanda.
Captain Blayton’s stern countenance relaxed slightly. “Ah, so you do know him. When he claimed to be your cook, I must admit I was—well, that is neither here nor there. The case is this: my own cook failing to report for duty last night, I ordered a search. Just before dawn, this fellow—Padji, as you say—appeared, and led us to a certain tea shop, where we found Saunders in a state of delirium.”
“Terrible fever,” Padji said gravely. “I heard his cries. I have heard that terrible sound before.”
Amanda threw Mrs. Gales a glance. The widow must have grasped
the situation just as quickly, for she glared at Padji.
Sublimely oblivious to Mrs. Gales’s sulphurous expression, Padji bent his own innocent gaze upon Amanda.
“I tell the great ship’s master I have no more heart to cook for the family when my gracious mistress is gone,” he said sadly. “My heart breaks because she leaves forever. In the night, I run away to see the ship that will bear her away across the world. I weep many tears into the waters, to send a part of me with her. It was Fate led me to the place, mistress, that I might find the poor man, my brother cook, in time to save his life. I carry him, gentle as one holds a baby, to the shop of a good friend. This friend recognises the man, Saunders. And so myself, I seek out the wise captain, and myself do his bidding and find the doctor. With my own hands, I make a healing broth, which the doctor himself tastes.”
“Yes, well, there’s no question you were helpful,” the captain interjected. “But we ought to get to the point, oughtn’t we?” Turning to Amanda, he said, “The doctor has pronounced Saunders unfit to travel.”
“To move him from his bed would be death,” Padji solemnly agreed. “I see at once the hand of Fate. The gods lead me to this man. Why? Inscrutable are the ways of the Eternal, yet this riddle is soon unlocked. The man is a cook. What is Padji? A cook. It is plain I am summoned in order to take his place, and continue near my beloved mistress.”
“The point is,” the captain said impatiently, “this fellow proposes to cook for us in exchange for passage to England. It is true I need a cook. On the other hand, I cannot possibly harbour runaway native servants. I considered speaking to Lord Cavencourt himself, but—well, I was reluctant to get your cook into difficulties, after he’d made himself so useful. He seemed exceedingly alarmed at the prospect of confronting your brother.”
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Gales sympathetically. “How awkward for you.”
Amanda found her own sympathy inclining to Padji. He had done a terrible thing, but he was obviously desperate. She could not abandon him.
“How I wish I’d known sooner,” she told Captain Blayton. “Had you spoken to Lord Cavencourt, you would have learned he’d have no objections. Padji has simply spared my brother the unhappy task of discharging him. You see,” she quickly explained, before the captain could wonder what horrendous crime the Indian had committed, “the rest of us had grown accustomed to Padji’s hearty style of cooking. Unfortunately, Lady Cavencourt found it too robust for her delicate palate.”