Dewan Sewlal had warned Hunsa and Sookdee against their natural
proclivities for making a decoity while travelling to the Pindari camp,
as the mission was more important than loot--an enterprise that might
cause them to be killed or arrested. Indeed the Gulab had made this a
condition of her going with them. She was practically put in command.
Both Nana Sahib and the Dewan were pleased over what they deemed her
sensible acquiescence in the scheme. As has been said, the Dewan,
recognising the debased ferocity of Hunsa, had promised him the torture
when he returned if Bootea had any cause of complaint.
The decoit, believing that Bootea was designed for Nana Sahib's harem,
knew that as one favoured in the Prince's eyes, he would surely be put
to death if he offended her.
So, travelling with the almost incessant swift progress which was an
art with all decoits, in a few days they arrived at Rajgar, the town to
which Amir Khan had shifted. He had taken possession of a palace
belonging to the Rajput Raja as his head-quarters, and his army of
horsemen were encamped in tents on the vast sandy plain that extended
from both sides of the river Nahal: the local name of this river was
"The Stream of Blood," so named because a fierce force of Arab
mercenaries in the employ of Sindhia, many years before, had butchered
the entire tribe of Nahals--man, woman, and child,--higher up in the
hills.
As had been planned, some of the decoits had come as recruits to the
Pindari standard. This created no suspicion, because free-lance
soldiers, adventurous spirits, from all over India flocked to a force
that was known to be massed for the purpose of loot. It was an easy
service; little discipline; a regular Moslem fighting horde, holding
little in reverence but the daily prayer and the trim of a spear, or
the edge of a sword. Amir Khan was the law, the army regulation, the
one thing to obey. As to the matter of prayers, for those who were not
followers of the Prophet, who carried no little prayer carpet to kneel
upon, face to Mecca, there was, it being a Rajput town, always the
shrine of Shiva and his elephant-headed son, Ganesh, to receive
obeisance from the Hindus. And those who had come as players,
wrestlers, were welcomed joyously, for, there being no immediate matter
of a raid and throat-cutting, and little of disciplinary duties, time
hung heavy on the hands of these grown-up children.
Hunsa was remembered by several of the Pindaris as having ridden with
them before; and he also had suffered an apostacy of faith for he now
swore by the Beard of the Prophet, and turned out at the call of the
_muezzin_, and testified to the fact that there was but one god--Allah.
And he had known his Amir Khan well when he had told the Dewan that the
fierce Pindari was gentle enough when it came to a matter of feminine
beauty, for Bootea made an impression.
Of course it would have taken a more obdurate male than Amir Khan to
not appreciate the exquisite charm of the Gulab; no art could have
equalled the inherent patrician simplicity and sweetness of her every
thought and action. Perhaps her determination to ingratiate herself
into the good graces of the Chief was intensified, brought to a finer
perfection, by the motive that had really instigated her to accept this
terrible mission, her love for the Englishman, Barlow.
Of course this was not an unusual thing; few women have lived who are
not capable of such a sacrifice for some one; the "grand passion," when
it comes, and rarely out of reasoning, smothers everything in the heart
of almost every woman--once. It had come to Bootea; foolishly,
impossible of an attainment, everything against its ultimate
accomplished happiness, but nothing of that mattered. She was there,
waiting--waiting for the service that Fate had whispered into her being.
And she danced divinely--that is the proper word for it. Her dancing
was a revelation to Amir Khan who had seen _nautchnis_ go through their
sensuous, suggestive, voluptuous twistings of supple forms, disfigured
by excessive decoration--bangles, anklets, nose rings, high-coloured
swirling robes, and with voices worn to a rasping timbre that shrilled
rather than sang the _ghazal_ (love song) as they gyrated. But here
was something different. Bootea's art was the art that was taught
princesses in the palaces of the Rajput Ranas, not the bidding of a
courtesan for the desire of a man. Her dress was a floating cloud of
gauzy muslin: and her sole evident adornment the ruby-headed gold
snake-bracelet, the iron band of widowhood being concealed higher on
her arm. Some intuition had taught the girl that this mode would give
rise in the warrior's heart to a feeling of respectful liking: it had
always been that way with real men where she was concerned.
When Amir Kahn passed an order that Bootea was to be treated as a
queen, his officers smiled in their heavy black beards and whispered
that his two wives would yet be hand-maidens to a third, the favourite.
Hunsa saw all this, for he was the one that often carried a message to
the Gulab that her presence was desired in the palace. But there were
always others there; the players and the musicians--the ones who played
the sitar (guitar) and the violin; and the officers.
Hunsa was getting impatient. Every time he looked at the handsome
black-bearded head of the warrior he was like a covetous thief gazing
upon a diamond necklace that is almost within his grasp. He had come
there to kill him and delay was dangerous. He had been warned by the
Dewan that they suspected Barlow meant to visit the Chief on behalf of
the British. He might turn up any day. When he spoke to Bootea about
her part in the mission, the enticing of Amir Khan to her tent so that
he might be killed, she simply answered:
"Hunsa, you will wait until I give you a command to kill the Chief. If
you do not, it is very likely that you will be the sacrifice, for he is
not one to be driven." She vowed that if he broke this injunction she
would denounce him to Amir Khan; she would have done so at first but
for the idea that treachery to her people could not be justified but by
dire necessity.
Every day the Gulab, as she walked through the crowded street, scanned
the faces of men afoot and on horseback, looking for one clothed as a
Patan, but in his eyes the something she would know, the something that
would say he was the deified one. And she had told Amir Khan that
there was a Patan coming with a message for him, and that when such an
one asked for audience that he should say nothing, but see that he was
admitted.
Then one day--it was about two weeks of waiting--Captain Barlow came.
He was rather surprised at the readiness with which he was admitted for
an audience with the Chief. It was in the audience hall that he was
received, and the Chief was surrounded, as he sat on the Raja's dais,
by officers.
Barlow had come as Ayub Alli, an Afghan, and as it was a private
interview he desired, he made the visit a formal one, the paying of
respects, with the usual presenting of the hilt of his sword for the
Chief to touch with the tips of his fingers in the way of accepting his
respects.
The Chief, knowing this was the one Bootea had spoken of, wrote on a
slip of yellow paper something in Persian and tendered it to Barlow,
saying, "That will be your passport when you would speak with me if
there is in your heart something to be said."
Going, Barlow saw that he had written but the one word [Transcriber's
note: three Afghan or Persian characters], translated, "the Afghan."
Hunsa, too, had watched for the coming of Barlow. The same whisper
that had come to Bootea's ears that he would ride as a Patan had been
told him by the Dewan. Knowing that when Barlow arrived he would
endeavour to see the Chief in his quarters, Hunsa daily hovered near
the palace and chatted with the guard at the gates; the heavy double
teak-wood gates, on one side of which was painted, on a white
stone-wall, a war-elephant and the other side a Rajput horseman, his
spear held at the charge. This was the allegorical representation, so
general all over Mewar, of Rana Pertab charging a Mogul prince mounted
on an elephant.
Thus Hunsa had seen the tall Patan and heard him make the request for
an audience with Amir Khan. It was the walk, the slight military
precision, that caused the decoit to mutter, "No hill Afghan that."
And when Barlow had come forth the Bagree trailed him up through the
chowk; and just as the man he followed came to the end of the narrow
crowded way, Hunsa saw Bootea, coming from the opposite direction,
suddenly stop, and her eyes go wide as they were fixed on the face of
the tall Patan.
"It is the accursed Sahib," Hunsa snarled between his grinding teeth.
He brooded over the advent of the messenger and racked his animal brain
for some scheme to accomplish his mission of murder, and counteract the
other's influence. And presently a bit of rare deviltry crept into his
mind, joint partner with the murder thought. If he could but kill the
Chief and have the blame of it cast upon the Sahib, who, no doubt,
would have his interviews with Amir Khan alone.
During the time Hunsa had been there, several times in the palace,
somewhat of a privileged character, known to be connected with the
Gulab, he had familiarised himself with the plan of the marble
building: the stairways that ran down to the central court; the many
passages; the marble fret-work screen niches and mysterious chambers.
Either Hunsa or Sookdee was now always trailing Barlow--his every move
was known. And then, as if some evil genii had taken a spirit hand in
the guidance of events, Hunsa's chance came. Barlow, who had tried
three times to see Amir Khan, one day received a message at the gate
that he was to come back that evening, when the Chief, having said his
prayers, would give him a private audience.
Hunsa had seen Barlow making his way from the _serai_ where he camped
with his horse toward the palace, and hurrying with the swift celerity
of a jungle creature, he reached the gate first. His head wrapped in
the folds of a turban so that his ugly face was all but hidden, he was
talking to the guard when Barlow gave the latter his yellow slip of
passport; and as the guard left his post and entered the dim entrance
to call up the stairway for one to usher in the Afghan, Hunsa slipped
nonchalantly through the gate and stood in the shadow of a jutting
wall, his black body and drab loin-cloth merging into the gloom.