The dark sky had begun to show pale in the east, heralding the
first traces of day. Hawksworth stood in the shadows of his tent, at
the edge of the vast Imperial camp, and pulled his frayed leather
jerkin tighter against the cold. He watched as the elephants filed
past, bulky silhouettes against the dawn. They were being led from the
temporary stables on the hill behind him toward the valley below, where
cauldrons of water were being stoked for their morning bath. Heating
the water for the elephant baths had become routine during the reign of
Akman, who had noticed his elephants shivering from their baths on
chilly mornings and decreed their bath water warmed henceforth.
As he watched the line of giant animals winding their way through the
camp, waving their trunks in the morning air, he realized they were not
docile female _zenana _elephants, but male war elephants, first and
second rank.
First-ranked war elephants, called "full blood," were selected from
young males who had demonstrated the endurance and even temper
essential in battle; those granted Second Rank, called "tiger-seizing,"
were slightly smaller, but with the same temperament and strength. Each
elephant had five keepers and was placed under the training of a
special military superintendent--whose responsibility was to school the
animal in boldness amid artillery fire. The keepers were monitored
monthly by Imperial inspectors, who fined them a month's wages if their
elephant had noticeably lost weight. Should an elephant lose a tusk
through its keepers' inattention to an infection, they were fined one
eighth the value of the animal, and if an elephant died in their care,
they received a penalty of three months' wages and a year's suspension.
But the position of elephant keeper was a coveted place of great
responsibility. A well-trained war elephant could be valued at a
hundred thousand rupees, a full _lakh_, and experienced commanders had
been known to declare one good elephant worth five hundred horses in a
battle.
Hawksworth studied the elephants, admiring their disciplined stride and
easy footing, and wondered again why the army had stationed its stables
so near the Imperial camp. Did Arangbar somehow feel he needed
protection?
"They're magnificent, don't you think?" Shirin emerged from her tent to
join him, absently running her hand across the back of his jerkin. It
had been six days since they had left Agra, and it seemed to Hawksworth
she had grown more beautiful each day, more loving each night. The
nightmare of the past weeks had already faded to a distant memory. She
was fully dressed now, with a transparent scarf pinned to her dark hair
by a band of pearls, thick gold bracelets, flowered trousers beneath a
translucent skirt, and dark _kohl _highlighting her eyes and eyebrows.
He watched, enthralled as she pulled a light cloak over her shoulders.
"Especially in the morning. They say Akman used to train his royal
elephants to dance to music, and to shoot a bow."
"I don't think I'll ever get used to elephants." Hawksworth admired her
a moment longer in the dawn light, then looked back at the immense
forms lumbering past, trying to push aside the uneasy feeling their
presence gave him. "You'd be very amused to hear what people in London
think they're like. Nobody there has ever seen an elephant, but there
are lots of fables about them. It's said elephants won't ford a clear
stream during the day, because they're afraid of their reflection, so
they only cross streams at night."
Shirin laughed out loud and reached to kiss him quickly on the cheek.
"I never know whether to believe your stories of England."
"I swear it."
"And the horse-drawn coaches you told me about. Describe one again."
"It has four wheels, instead of two like your carts have, and it really
is pulled by horses, usually two but sometimes four. It's enclosed and
inside there are seats and cushions . . . almost like a palanquin."
"Does that mean your king's _zenana _women all ride in these strange
coaches, instead of on elephants?"
"In the first place, King James has no _zenana_. I don't think he'd
know what to do with that many women. And there are absolutely no
elephants in England. Not even one."
"Can you possibly understand how hard it is for me to imagine a place
without elephants and _zenanas_?" She looked at him and smiled. "And no
camels either?"
"No camels. But we have lots of stories about camels too. Tell me, is
it true that if you're poisoned, you can be put inside a newly slain
camel and it will draw out the poison?"
Shirin laughed again and looked up the hill toward the stables, where
pack camels were being fed and massaged with sesame oil. The bells on
their chest ropes sounded lightly as their keepers began harnessing
them, in strings of five. Hawksworth turned to watch as the men began
fitting two of the camels to carry a _mihaffa_, a wooden turret
suspended between them by heavy wooden poles. All the camels were
groaning pitifully and biting at their keepers, their customary
response to the prospect of work.
"That sounds like some tale you'd hear in the bazaar. Why should a dead
camel draw out poison?" She turned back to Hawksworth. "Sometimes you
make the English sound awfully naive. Tell me what it's really like
there."
"It is truly beautiful. The fairest land there is, especially in the
late spring and early summer, when it's green and cool." Hawksworth
watched the sun emerge from behind a distant hill, beginning to blaze
savagely against the parched winter landscape almost the moment it
appeared. Thoughts of England suddenly made him long for shade, and he
took Shirin's arm, leading her around the side of their rise and back
into the morning cool. Ahead of them lay yet another bleak valley,
rocky and sere. "I sometimes wonder how you can survive here in summer.
It was already autumn when I made landfall and the heat was still
unbearable."
"Late spring is even worse than summer. At least in summer there's
rain. But we're accustomed to the heat. We say no _feringhi _ever gets
used to it. I don't think anyone from your England could ever really
love or understand India."
"Don't give up hope yet. I'm starting to like it." He took her chin in
his hand and carefully studied her face with a scrutinizing frown, his
eyes playing critically from her eyes to her mouth to her vaguely
aquiline Persian nose. "What part do I like best?" He laughed and
kissed the tip of her nose. "I think it's the diamond you wear in your
left nostril."
"All women wear those!" She bit at him. "So I have to also. But I've
never liked it. You'd better think of something else."
He slipped his arm around her and held her next to him, wondering if he
should tell her of his bargain with Arangbar--that she had been released
only because he had offered to take her from India forever. For a
moment the temptation was powerful, but he resisted. Not yet. Don't
give her a chance to turn headstrong and refuse.
"You know, I think you'd like England once you saw it. Even with no
elephants, and no slaves to fan away the flies. We're not as primitive
as you seem to imagine. We have music, and if you'd learn our language,
you might discover England has many fine poets."
"Like the one you once recited for me?" She turned to face him. "What
was his name?"
"That was John Donne. I hear he's a cleric now, so I doubt he's writing
his randy poems and songs any more. But there
are others. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, a staunch adventurer who writes
passable verse, and there's also Ben Jonson, who writes poems, and
plays also. In fact, lots of English plays are in verse."
"What do you mean by plays?"
"English plays. They're like nothing else in the world." He stared
wistfully into the parched valley spread out before them. "Sometimes I
think they're what I miss most about London when I'm away."
"Well, what are they?"
"They're stories that are acted out by players. In playhouses."