“And listen,” he said, feeling a sudden urge to throw his weight around—after all, he was a patient here. “Tell them out there I don’t want no more cripples coming in here.”
In the darkness, Ron thought he detected a smile on the face above him.
“Certainly, Mr. Daniels. I shall see to it that your next attendant is quite sound of limb.”
“Good. Now take off, geek.”
“Very well.”
Ron decided he liked being a patient. He could give orders and people had to listen. And why not? He was sick and—
“Help me!”
If only he could order Tommy to stop.
The junk the geek’d given him didn’t seem to be helping his pain. Only thing to do was try to sleep.
He thought about that bastard cop who’d busted up his hands tonight. Said it was private, but Ron knew a pig when he saw one. Swore he’d find that sadist bastard even if he had to hang around every precinct house in New York until winter.
And then Ron would follow him home. He wouldn’t get back at him directly—Ron had a bad feeling about that guy and didn’t want to be around if he ever got real mad.
But maybe he had a wife and kids …
Ron lay there in a half doze for a good forty-five minutes planning what he’d do to get even with the pig. He was just tipping over the edge into a deep sleep, falling … finally falling …
“Help me!”
Ron jerked violently in the bed, pulling his right arm out of the sling and knocking it against the side rail. A fiery blast of pain shot up to his shoulder. Tears squeezed out of his eyes as breath hissed noisily through his bared teeth.
When the pain dropped to a more tolerable level, he knew what he had to do.
That old fucker had to go.
Ron pulled his left arm out of its sling, then eased himself over the side. The floor was cold. He lifted his pillow between his two casts and padded over to Tommy’s bed. All he had to do was lay it over the old guy’s face and lean on it. A few minutes of that and poof, no more snores, no more yells, no more Tommy.
He saw something move outside the window as he passed by it. He looked closer. A shadow, like somebody’s head and shoulders. A big somebody.
But this was the fifth floor.
Had to be seeing things. That stuff in the cup must have been stronger than he thought. He bent closer to the window for a better look. What he saw there held him transfixed for a long, long heartbeat.
A face out of a nightmare, worse than all his nightmares combined. And those glowing yellow eyes …
A scream started in his throat as he lurched backward. But before it could reach his lips, a taloned, three-fingered hand smashed through the double pane and clamped savagely, unerringly, around his throat. The rough flesh was cool and damp, almost slimy, with a rotten stench. He caught a glimpse of smooth dark skin stretched over a long, lean, muscular arm leading out through the shattered glass to … what?
And then Ron felt excruciating pressure against his windpipe, crushing it closed against his spine with an explosive crunch! He arched his back and clawed at the imprisoning fingers, but they were like a steel collar. As he struggled vainly for air, his vision blurred. And then, with a smooth, almost casual motion, he felt himself yanked bodily through the window, felt the rest of the glass shatter with his passage, the shards either falling away or raking savagely at his flesh. He had one soul-numbing, moon-limned glimpse of his attacker before his oxygen-starved brain mercifully extinguished his vision.
And back in the room, after that final instant of crashing noise, all was quiet again. Two of the remaining patients, deep in chemical dreams, stirred in their beds and turned over.
Tommy, the closest to the window, shouted “Help me!” and then went back to snoring.
TWO
Bharangpur, West Bengal, India
Wednesday, June 24, 1857
It’s all gone wrong. Every bleeding thing gone wrong!
Captain Sir Albert Westphalen of the Bengal European Fusiliers stood in the shade of an awning between two market stalls and sipped cool water from a jug freshly drawn from a well. It was a glorious relief to be shielded from direct attack by the Indian sun, but he could not escape the glare. It bounced off the sand in the street, off the white stucco walls of the buildings, even off the pale hides of those nasty hump-backed bulls roaming freely through the marketplace. The glare drove the heat through his eyes to the very center of his brain. He dearly wished he could pour the contents of the jug over his head and let the water trickle down the length of his body.
But no. He was a gentleman in the uniform of Her Majesty’s army and surrounded by heathens. He couldn’t do anything so undignified. So he stood here in the shade, his high-domed pith helmet square upon his head, his buff uniform smelly and sopping in the armpits and buttoned up tight at the throat, and pretended the heat didn’t bother him. He ignored the sweat soaking the thin hair under his helmet, oozing down over his face, clinging to the dark mustache he had so carefully trimmed and waxed this morning, gathering in drops at his chin to fall off onto his tunic.
Oh, for a breeze. Or better still, rain. But neither was due for another month. He had heard that when the summer monsoon started blowing from the southwest in July there would be plenty of rain. Until then, he and his men would have to fry.
It could be worse.
He could have been sent with the others to retake Meerut and Delhi from the rebels … forced marches along the Ganges basin in full uniform and kit, rushing to face hordes of crazed sepoys waving their bloody talwars and shouting “Din! Din! Din!”
He shuddered. Not for me, thank you very much.
Luckily the rebellion had not spread this far east, at least not to any appreciable extent. That was fine with Westphalen. He intended to stay as far away from the pandies as he could. He knew from regimental records that 20,000 British troops were quartered on the subcontinent. What if all of India’s untold millions decided to rise up and end the raj? It was a recurrent nightmare.
And no more East India Company. Which, Westphalen knew, was the real reason the army was here—to protect “John Company’s” interests.
He had sworn to fight for the Crown and he was willing—up to a point—to do that, but he’d be damned if he was going to die fighting for a bunch of tea traders. After all, he was a gentleman and had accepted a commission out here only to forestall the financial catastrophe threatening his estate. And perhaps to make some contacts during his term of service. He had arranged for a safe, purely administrative job.
All part of a plan to allow him time to find a way to recoup his considerable gambling losses—one might say incredible losses for a man just forty years of age—and then go home and straighten out his debts. He grimaced at the enormous amount of money he had squandered since his father had died and the baronetcy had passed to him.
But his luck had run true here on the far side of the world—it stayed bad. There had been years of peace in India before he had come—a little trouble here and there, but nothing serious. The raj had seemed totally secure. But now he knew that dissension and discontent among the native recruits had been bubbling beneath the surface, waiting, it seemed, for his arrival. Here not even a year, and what happens? The sepoys go on a rampage!
It wasn’t fair.
But it could be worse, Albert, old boy, he told himself for the thousandth time that day. It could be worse.
And it most certainly could be far better. Better to be back in Calcutta at Fort William. Not much cooler, but closer to the sea there. If India explodes, it’s just a hop and a skip to a boat on the Hoogly River and then off to the safety of the Bay of Bengal.
He took another sip and leaned his back against the wall. It wasn’t an officerly posture, but he really didn’t give a bloody damn at this point. His office was like a freshly stoked furnace. The only sane thing to do was to stay here under the awning with a water jug until the sun got lower in the sky. Three o’clock now
. It should be cooling down soon.
He waved his hand through the air around his face. If he ever got out of India alive, the one thing he would remember more vividly than the heat and humidity was the flies. They were everywhere, encrusting everything in the marketplace—the pineapples, the oranges, the lemons, the piles of rice—all were covered with black dots that moved and flew and hovered, and lit again. Bold, arrogant flies that landed on your face and darted away just before you could slap them.
That incessant buzz—was it shoppers busy haggling with the merchants, or was it hordes of flies?
The smell of hot bread wafted by his nose. The couple in the stall across the alley to his left sold chapatis, little disks of unleavened bread that were a dietary staple of everyone in India, rich and poor alike. He remembered trying them on a couple of occasions and finding them tasteless. For the last hour the woman had been leaning over a dung fire cooking an endless stream of chapatis on flat iron plates. The temperature of the air around that fire had to be 130 degrees.
How do these people stand it?
He closed his eyes and wished for a world free of heat, drought, avaricious creditors, senior officers, and rebellious sepoys. He kept them closed, enjoying the relative darkness behind the lids. It would be nice to spend the rest of the day like this, just leaning here and—
It wasn’t a sound that snapped his eyes open, more the lack of it. The street had gone utterly silent. As he straightened from the wall he could see the shoppers who had been busy inspecting goods and haggling over prices now disappearing into alleys and side streets and doorways—no rush, no panic, but moving with deliberate swiftness, as if they had all suddenly remembered somewhere else they had to be.
Only the merchants remained … the merchants and their flies.
Wary and uneasy, Westphalen gripped the handle of the saber slung at his left hip. He had been trained in its use but had never had to defend himself with it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to now.
He sensed movement off to his left and turned.
A squat little toad of a man swathed in the orange dhoti of a holy one led a train of six mules on a leisurely course down the middle of the street.
Westphalen allowed himself to relax. Just a svamin of some sort. There was always one or another of them about.
As Westphalen watched, the priest veered to the far side of the street and stopped his mules before a cheese stand. He did not move from his place at the head of the train, did not look left or right. He simply stood and waited. The cheese maker quickly gathered up some of his biggest blocks and wheels and brought them out to the little man who inclined his head a few degrees after an instant’s glance at the offering. The merchant put these in a sack tied to the back of one of the mules, then retreated to the rear of his stall.
Not a rupee had changed hands.
Westphalen watched with growing amazement.
Next stop was on Westphalen’s side of the street, the chapati stall next door. The husband brought a basketful out for inspection. Another nod, and these too were deposited on the back of a mule.
Again, no money changed hands—and no questions about quality. Westphalen had never seen anything like this. These merchants would haggle with their mothers over the price of breakfast.
He could imagine only one thing that could inspire such cooperation: fear.
The priest moved on without stopping at the water stand.
“Something wrong with your water?” Westphalen said to the vendor squatting on the ground beside him.
As usual, he spoke in English. He saw no reason to learn an Indian tongue and had never tried. Fourteen major languages yammered across this God-forsaken subcontinent and something like 250 dialects. An absurd situation. What few words he had picked up had been through osmosis rather than conscious effort. After all, it was the natives’ responsibility to learn to understand him. And most of them did, especially the merchants.
“The temple has its own water,” the vendor said without looking up.
“Which temple is that?”
Westphalen wanted to know what the priest held over these merchants’ heads to make them so compliant. It was information that might prove useful in the future.
“The Temple-in-the-Hills.”
“I didn’t know there was a temple in the hills.”
This time the water vendor raised his head and stared at him. The dark eyes held a disbelieving look, as if to say, How could you not know?
“And to which one of your heathen gods is this particular temple dedicated?” His words seemed to echo in the surrounding silence.
The water vendor whispered, “Kali, the Black Goddess.”
Oh, yes. He had heard that name before. She was supposedly popular in the Bengal region. These Hindus had more gods than you could shake a stick at. A strange religion, Hinduism. He had heard that it had little or no dogma, no founder, and no leader. Really—what kind of a religion was that?
“I thought her big temple was down near Calcutta, at Dakshinesvar.”
“There are many temples to Kali,” the water vendor said. “But none like the Temple-in-the-Hills.”
“Really? And what’s so special about this one?”
“Rakoshi.”
“What’s that?”
But the water vendor lowered his head and refused to respond any further. It was as if he thought he had said too much already.
Six weeks ago Westphalen would not have tolerated such insolence. But six weeks ago a rebellion by the sepoys had been unthinkable.
He took a final sip of the water, tossed a coin into the silent vendor’s lap, and stepped out into the full ferocity of the sun. The air out in the open was like a blast from a burning house. He felt the dust that perpetually overhung the street mix with the beads of perspiration on his face, leaving it coated with a fine layer of salty mud.
He followed the svamin through the rest of the marketplace, watching the chosen merchants donate the best of their wares without a grumble or a whimper, as if glad of the opportunity. Westphalen tracked him through most of Bharangpur, along its widest thoroughfares, down its narrowest alleys. And everywhere the priest and his mule train went, the people faded away at his approach and reappeared in his wake.
Finally, as the sun was drifting down the western sky, the priest came to the north gate.
Now we’ve got him, Westphalen thought.
All pack animals were to be inspected for contraband before being allowed exit from Bharangpur or any other garrisoned town. The fact that no rebel activity had been reported anywhere in Bengal did not matter; it was a general order and as such had to be enforced.
Westphalen watched from a distance of about two hundred yards. He would wait until the lone British sentry had begun the inspection, then he would stroll over as if on a routine patrol of the gate and learn a little more about this svamin and his temple in the hills.
He saw the priest stop at the gate and speak to a sentry with an Enfield casually slung across his back. They seemed like old friends. After a few moments, without inspection or detention, the priest resumed his path through the gate—but not before Westphalen had seen him press something into the sentry’s palm in a flash of movement. If Westphalen had blinked he would have missed it.
The priest and his mules were beyond the wall and on their way toward the hills in the northwest by the time Westphalen reached the gate.
“Give me your rifle, soldier!”
The sentry saluted, then shrugged the Enfield off his shoulder and handed it to Westphalen without question. Westphalen knew him. His name was MacDougal, an enlisted man—young, red-faced, hard-fighting, hard-drinking, like most of his fellow Bengal European Fusiliers. In his three weeks as commander of the Bharangpur garrison, Westphalen had come to think of him as a good soldier.
“I’m placing you under arrest for dereliction of duty!”
MacDougal blanched. “Sir, I—”
“And for taking a bribe!”
“I trie
d to give it back to ’im, sir!”
Westphalen laughed. This soldier must think him blind as well as stupid!
“Of course you did! Just like you gave his mules a thorough inspection.”
“Old Jaggernath’s only bringing supplies to the temple, sir. I’ve been here two years, captain, and ’e’s come by every month, like clockwork, every new moon. Only brings food out to the hills, ’e does, sir.”
“He must be inspected like everybody else.”
MacDougal glanced after the retreating mule train. “Jaggernath said they don’t like their food touched, sir. Only by their own kind.”
“Well, isn’t that a pity! And I suppose you let him pass uninspected out of the goodness of your heart?” Westphalen was growing steadily angrier at this soldier’s insolence. “Empty your pockets and let’s see how many pieces of silver it took to get you to betray your fellow soldiers.”
Color suddenly flooded back into MacDougal’s face. “I’d never betray me mates!”
For some reason, Westphalen believed him. But he couldn’t drop the matter now.
“Empty your pockets!”
MacDougal emptied only one: from his right-hand pocket he withdrew a small, rough stone, clear, dull red in color. Westphalen withheld a gasp.
“Give it to me.”
He held it up to the light of the setting sun. He had seen his share of uncut stones as he had gradually turned the family valuables into cash to appease his more insistent creditors. This was an uncut ruby. A tiny thing, but polished up it could bring an easy hundred pounds. His hand trembled. If this is what the priest gave to a sentry as a casual reward for leaving his temple’s food untouched …
“Where is this temple?”
“Don’t know, sir.” MacDougal was watching him eagerly, probably looking for a way out of dereliction charges. “And I’ve never been able to find out. The locals don’t know and don’t seem to want to know. The Temple-in-the-Hills is supposed to be full of jewels but guarded by demons.”
Westphalen grunted. More heathen rubbish. But the stone in his hand was genuine enough. And the casual manner in which it had been given to MacDougal indicated there might be many more where it came from.