Hanadra reeks of history, blood-soaked and mysterious. Temples piled on
the site of olden temples; palaces where half-forgotten kings usurped
the thrones of conquerors who came from God knows where to conquer older
kings; roads built on the bones of conquered armies; houses and palaces
and subterranean passages that no man living knows the end of and few
even the beginning. Dark corridors and colonnades and hollow walls;
roofs that have ears and peep-holes; floors that are undermined by
secret stairs; trees that have swayed with the weight of rotting human
skulls and have shimmered with the silken bannerets of emperors. Such is
Hanadra, half-ruined, and surrounded by a wall that was age-old in the
dawn of written history.
Even its environs are mysterious; outside the walls, there are carven,
gloomy palaces that once re-echoed to the tinkle of stringed instruments
and the love-songs of some sultan's favorite--now fallen into ruins,
or rebuilt to stable horses or shelter guns and stores and men; but
eloquent in all their new-smeared whitewash, or in crumbling decay, of
long-since dead intrigue. No places, those, for strong men to live alone
in, where night-breezes whisper through forgotten passages and dry teak
planking recreaks to the memory of dead men's footsteps.
But strong men are not the only makings of an Empire, nor yet the only
sufferers. Wherever the flag of England flies above a distant outpost
or droops in the stagnant moisture of an Eastern swamp, there are the
graves of England's women. The bones that quarreling jackals crunch
among the tombstones--the peace along the clean-kept borderline--the
pride of race and conquest and the cleaner pride of work well done,
these are not man's only. Man does the work, but he is held to it and
cheered on by the girl who loves him.
And so, above a stone-flagged courtyard, in a room that once had echoed
to the laughter of a sultan's favorite, it happened that an English
girl of twenty-one was pacing back and forth. Through the open curtained
window she had seen her husband lead his command out through the echoing
archway to the plain beyond; she had heard his boyish voice bark out the
command and had listened to the rumble of the gun-wheels dying in the
distance--for the last time possibly. She knew, as many an English girl
has known, that she was alone, one white woman amid a swarm of sullen
Aryans, and that she must follow along the road the guns had taken,
served and protected by nothing more than low-caste natives.
And yet she was dry-eyed, and her chin was high; for they are a strange
breed, these Anglo-Saxon women who follow the men they love to the
lonely danger-zone. Ruth Bellairs could have felt no joy in her
position; she had heard her husband growling his complaint at being
forced to leave her, and she guessed what her danger was. Fear must have
shrunk her heartbeats and loneliness have tried her courage. But there
was an ayah in the room with her, a low-caste woman of the conquered
race; and pride of country came to her assistance. She was firm-lipped
and, to outward seeming, brave as she was beautiful.
Even when the door resounded twice to the sharp blow of a saber-hilt,
and the ayah's pock-marked ebony took on a shade of gray, she stood like
a queen with an army at her back and neither blanched nor trembled.
“Who is that, ayah?” she demanded.
The ayah shrank into herself and showed the whites of her eyes and
grinned, as a pariah dog might show its teeth--afraid, but scenting
carrion.
“Go and see!”
The ayah shuddered and collapsed, babbling incoherencies and calling on
a horde of long-neglected gods to witness she was innocent. She clutched
strangely at her breast and used only one hand to drag her shawl around
her face. While she babbled she glanced wild-eyed around the long,
low-ceilinged room. Ruth Bellairs looked down at her pityingly and went
to the door herself and opened it.
“Salaam, memsahib!” boomed a deep voice from the darkness.
Ruth Bellairs started and the ayah screamed.
“Who are you? Enter--let me see you!”
A black beard and a turban and the figure of a man--and then white teeth
and a saber-hilt and eyes that gleamed moved forward from the darkness.
“It is I, Mahommed Khan!” boomed the voice again, and the Risaldar
stepped out into the lamplight and closed the door behind him. Then,
with a courtly, long-discarded sweep of his right arm, he saluted.
“At the heavenborn's service!”
“Mahommed Khan! Thank God!”
The old man's shabbiness was very obvious as he faced her, with his back
against the iron-studded door; but he stood erect as a man of thirty,
and his medals and his sword-hilt and his silver scabbard-tip were
bright.
“Tell me, Mahommed Khan, you have seen my husband?”
He bowed.
“You have spoken to him?”
The old man bowed again.
“He left you in my keeping, heavenborn. I am to bring you safe to
Jundhra!”
She held her hand out and he took it like a cavalier, bending until he
could touch her fingers with his lips.
“What is the meaning of this hurrying of the guns to Jundhra, Risaldar?”
“Who knows, memsahib! The orders of the Sirkar come, and we of the
service must obey. I am thy servant and the Sirkar's!”
“You, old friend--that were servant, as you choose to call it, to my
husband's father! I am a proud woman to have such friends at call!” She
pointed to the ayah, recovering sulkily and rearranging the shawl about
her shoulders. “That I call service, Risaldar. She cowers when a knock
comes at the door! I need you, and you answer a hardly spoken prayer;
what is friendship, if yours is not?”
The Risaldar bowed low again.
“I would speak with that ayah, heavenborn!” he muttered, almost into his
beard. She could hardly catch the words.
“I can't get her to speak to me at all tonight, Mahommed Khan. She's
terrified almost out of her life at something. But perhaps you can do
better. Try. Do you want to question her alone?”
“By the heavenborn's favor, yes.”
Ruth walked down the room toward the window, drew the curtain back and
leaned her head out where whatever breeze there was might fan her cheek.
The Risaldar strode over to where the ayah cowered by an inner doorway.
“She-Hindu-dog!” he growled at her. “Mother of whelps! Louse-ridden
scavenger of sweepings! What part hast thou in all this treachery?
Speak!”
The ayah shrank away from him and tried to scream, but he gripped her by
the throat and shook her.
“Speak!” he growled again.
But his ten iron fingers held her in a vise-like grip and she could not
have answered him if she had tried to.
“O Risaldar!” called Ruth suddenly, with her head still out of the
window. He released the ayah and let her tumble as she pleased into a
heap.
“Heavenborn?”
“What is that red glow on the skyline over yonder?”
“A burning, heavenborn!”
“A burning? What burning? Funeral pyres? It's very big for funeral
pyres!”
“Nay, heavenborn!”
“What, then?”
She was still unfrightened, unsuspicious of the untoward. The Risaldar's
arrival on the scene had quite restored her confidence and she felt
content to ride with him to Jundhra on the morrow.
“Barracks, heavenborn!”
“Barracks? What barracks?”
“There is but one barracks between here and Jundhra.”
“Then--then--then--what has happened, Mahommed Khan?”
“The worst has happened, heavenborn!”
He stood between her and the ayah, so that she could not see the woman
huddled on the floor.
“The worst? You mean then--my--my--husband--you don't mean that my
husband--”
“I mean, heavenborn that there is insurrection! All India is ablaze from
end to end. These dogs here in Hanadra wait to rise because they think
the section will return here in an hour or two; then they propose to
burn it, men, guns and horses, like snakes in the summer grass. It is
well that the section will not return! We will ride out safely before
morning!”
“And, my husband--he knew--all this--before he left me here?”
“Nay! That he did not! Had I told him, he had disobeyed his orders and
shamed his service; he is young yet, and a hothead! He will be far
along the road to Jundhra before he knows what burns. And then he will
remember that he trusts me and obey orders and press on!”
“And you knew and did not tell him!”
“Of a truth I knew!”
She stood in silence for a moment, gazing at the red glow on the
skyline, and then turned to read, if she could, what was on the grim,
grizzled face of Mahommed Khan.
“The ayah!” he growled. “I have yet to ask questions of the ayah. Have I
permission to take her to the other room?”
She was leaning through the window again and did not answer him.
“Who's that moving in the shadow down below?” she asked him suddenly.
He leaned out beside her and gazed into the shadow. Then he called
softly in a tongue she did not know and some one rose up from the shadow
and answered him.
“Are we spied on, Risaldar?”
“Nay. Guarded, heavenborn! That man is my half-brother. May I take the
ayah through that doorway?”
“Why not question her in here?”
The mystery and sense of danger were getting the better of her; she was
thoroughly afraid now--afraid to be left alone in the room for a minute
even.
“There are things she would not answer in thy presence!”
“Very well. Only, please be quick!”
He bowed. Swinging the door open, he pushed the ayah through it to the
room beyond. Ruth was left alone, to watch the red glow on the skyline
and try to see the outline of the watcher in the gloom below. No sound
came through the heavy teak door that the Risaldar had slammed behind
him, and no sound came from him who watched; but from the silence of the
night outside and from dark corners of the room that she was in and from
the roof and walls and floor here came little eerie noises that made her
flesh creep, as though she were being stared at by eyes she could not
see. She felt that she must scream, or die, unless she moved; and she
was too afraid to move, and by far too proud to scream! At last she
tore herself away from the window and ran to a low divan and lay on it,
smothering her face among the cushions. It seemed an hour before the
Risaldar came out again, and then he took her by surprise.
“Heavenborn!” he said. She looked up with a start, to find him standing
close beside her.
“Mahommed Khan! You're panting! What ails you?”
“The heat, heavenborn--and I am old.”
His left hand was on his saber-hilt, thrusting it toward her
respectfully; she noticed that it trembled.
“Have I the heavenborn's leave to lock the ayah in that inner room?”
“Why, Risaldar?”
“The fiend had this in her possession!” He showed her a thin-bladed
dagger with an ivory handle; his own hand shook as he held it out to
her, and she saw that there were beads of perspiration on his wrist.
“She would have killed thee!”
“Oh, nonsense! Why, she wouldn't dare!”
“She confessed before she--she confessed! Have I the heavenborn's
leave?”
“If you wish it.”
“And to keep the key?”
“I suppose so, if you think it wise.”
He strode to the inner door and locked it and hid the key in an inside
pocket of his tunic.
“And now, heavenborn,” he said, “I crave your leave to bring my
half-brother to the presence!”
He scarcely waited for an answer, but walked to the window, leaned
out of it and whistled. A minute later he was answered by the sound of
fingernails scrabbling on the outer door. He turned the key and opened
it.
“Enter!” he ordered.
Barefooted and ragged, but as clean as a soldier on parade and with huge
knots of muscles bulging underneath his copper skin, a Rajput entered,
bowing his six feet of splendid manhood almost to the floor.
“This, heavenborn, is my half-brother, son of a low-born border-woman,
whom my father chose to honor thus far! The dog is loyal!”
“Salaam!” said Ruth, with little interest.
“Salaam, memsahib!” muttered the shabby Rajput. “Does any watch?”
demanded the Risaldar in Hindustanee. “Aye, one.”
“And he?”
“Is he of whom I spoke.”
“Where watches he?”
“There is a hidden passage leading from the archway; he peeps out
through a crack, having rolled back so far the stone that seals it.” He
held his horny fingers about an inch apart to show the distance.
“Couldst thou approach unseen?”
The Rajput nodded.
“And there are no others there?”
“No others.”
“Has thy strength left thee, or thy cunning?”
“Nay!”
“Then bring him!”
Without a word in answer the giant turned and went, and the Risaldar
made fast the door behind him. Ruth sat with her face between her hands,
trying not to cry or shudder, but obsessed and overpowered by a sense
of terror. The mystery that surrounded her was bad enough; but this
mysterious ordering and coming to and fro among her friends was worse
than horrible. She knew, though, that it would be useless to question
Mahommed Khan before he chose to speak. They waited there in the dimly
lighted room for what seemed tike an age again; she, pale and tortured
by weird imaginings; he, grim and bolt-upright like a statue of a
warrior. Then sounds came from the stairs again and the Risaldar hurried
to the door and opened it.
In burst the Risaldar's half-brother, breathing heavily and bearing a
load nearly as big as he was.
“The pig caught my wrist within the opening!” he growled, tossing his
gagged and pinioned burden on the floor. “See where he all but broke
it!”
“What is thy wrist to the service of the Raj? Is he the right one?”
“Aye!” He stooped and tore a twisted loin-cloth from his victim's face,
and the Risaldar walked to the lamp and brought it, to hold it above the
prostrate form. Ruth left the divan and stood between the men, terrified
by she knew not what fear, but drawn into the lamplight by insuperable
curiosity.
“This, heavenborn,” said the Risaldar, prodding at the man with his
scabbard-point, “is none other than the High Priest of Kharvani's temple
here, the arch-ringleader in all the treachery afoot--now hostage for
thy safety!”
He turned to his half-brother. “Unbind the thing he lies with!” he
commanded, and the giant unwrapped a twisted piece of linen from the
High Priest's mouth.
“So the big fox peeped through the trapdoor, because he feared to
trust the other foxes; and the big fox fell into the trap!” grinned the
Risaldar. “Bring me that table over yonder, thou!”
The half-brother did as he was told.
“Lay it here, legs upward, on the floor.
“Now, bind him to it--an arm to a leg and a leg to a leg.
“Remove his shoes.
“Put charcoal in yon brazier. Light it. Bring it hither!”
He seized a brass tongs, chose a glowing coal and held it six inches
from the High Priest's naked foot.
Ruth screamed.
“Courage, heavenborn! Have courage! This is naught to what he would have
done to thee!... Now, speak, thou priest of infidels! What plans are
laid and who will rise and when?”