Chintalpore, 25 February
Half a mile west of the city, the Rajah of Chintal’s palace sat prettily on a shallow hill just visible from the rooftops of the humblest dwellings of Chintalpore — imposing, therefore, rather than dominating. It had been built in the middle of the seventeenth century on the birth of the rajah’s great-grandfather, whose own father had visited the water gardens of Italy and had wished to create fountains and cascades of like grace. He had therefore excavated a canal to take water to his new seat from the tributary of the Godavari on which Chintalpore stood, and the palace’s precise elevation was determined by the Venetian engineer who had laid out the gardens. The rajah’s ancestor had thereby sacrificed the eminence of a hilltop situation for the elegance of a less elevated one. It was a compromise of which successive generations had approved. At least, that is, to this time, for the present rajah was without male issue.
The palace itself was an eclectic structure, a mix of Hindoo and Mughal architecture in which domes and pyramidal roofs stood harmoniously side by side — symbolic of the harmony in which the Mussulman population of Chintalpore lived with their more populous Hindoo neighbours. Everywhere there was marble and alabaster, some of it almost pure white, but some richly veined with a shade of red that Hervey would have been hard put to describe. There was a tranquillity, in part wrought by the continuous tinkling of water in the fountains, inside and out, which stood in the starkest contrast to the city through which he had just ridden. And, though the heat outdoors was hardly oppressive in this early month, he found the cool shade the greatest relief after their long march.
‘ “High on a throne of royal state, which far outshone the wealth of Ormus and Ind…”?’ he declaimed, turning to Selden with a smile.
‘You are beginning to sound like Major Edmonds.’
‘I had all Milton’s works with me during the passage.’
‘You suppose this is paradise, then: you shall have to wait and see.’
They had been met at the foot of the droog, the great earth ramp that led to the palace, by the rissaldar of the rajah’s life guard and thence borne by palanquin to the turreted gates which commanded the ascent. Here they observed the customary propitiatory offering to Pollear, the protecting deity of pilgrims and travellers. One of the bearers stopped before the gates and, with considerable ceremony, silently unwound his turban. Then, giving one end to another bearer, he placed himself the other side of the gateway so that the turban was stretched across the entrance at about waist height. Hervey and Locke, at Selden’s urging, placed some silver into the outstretched palms of the bearers before passing over the lowered tape and through the portals into the courtyard.
They were shown to their quarters at once — high, airy rooms with fretted windows overlooking the water gardens — for it was afternoon and the household followed the custom of retiring until the sun had fallen half-way to the horizon, even in this cooler season.
‘Nimbu pani, sahib?’ said the khitmagar, indicating a silver ewer in a cooling tray.
‘Mehrbani,’ replied Hervey, pleased at last to be able to say ‘thank you’ in a native tongue.
The khitmagar filled a silver cup, placed it on a tray by his side and took his leave with a low bow.
Lime juice, sweetened, with something giving it an edge: it was a prompt restorative. Selden had said they would have the afternoon to themselves, until seven, when the rajah would show them his gardens and menagerie and then feast them with the honour due to those who had saved one of his most favoured elephants. And if Hervey had been in any doubt as to the veneration in which the rajah held the elephant then the number and magnificence of the carvings of that animal about the palace would soon convince him. So, with Selden’s assurance that he would be called to bathe an hour before the appointed time, he lay down on the wide divan and gave himself to the pleasure of rest.
His Highness Godaji Rao Sundur, the Rajah of Chintalpore, spoke English with clear, precise diction, and without the inflections of other than an educated Englishman. Selden had told him that the rajah had had both an English nurse and governess, and a tutor from Cambridge, though he had travelled little beyond the frontiers of his princely state — except, in his youth, for a journey through the Ottoman domains to Rome, whose history enthralled him and whose religion still intrigued him. Although his native tongue was Telugu, the language of the majority of his Hindoo subjects, he was fluent in Urdu, and he even had a very passable acquaintance with French. But he preferred to converse in English, and many of Chintal’s officials were proficient, too. Indeed, with so many languages alive in Chintalpore, it was almost impossible for a visitor not to be able to make himself understood. The rajah’s daughter, Her Highness Suneyla Rao Sundur — the raj kumari — had likewise learned English at her nursemaid’s knee, but she had retained a religious sensibility — said Selden — that was wholly native. So native, indeed, as to be unfathomable, for, he confessed, after all his years in India he was still unable to give any account of what the Hindoo religion truly held to. The rajah, he believed, was at heart a good man, but for the raj kumari he could not speak, for she would never converse with him other than of mundane matters.
The rajah was all ease at their meeting. He greeted Hervey as if he were the saviour of one of his children, and Henry Locke hardly less. ‘In my father’s day, gentlemen, such an act as the rescue of a royal elephant would have been rewarded by the gift of a dozen virgins,’ he smiled; ‘but I much regret that I must offer you less than that.’
Hervey was momentarily unsure whether the rajah’s undoubtedly fine command of English embraced the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’. Henry Locke failed to register any distinction, and wondered merely — and with keen anticipation — what would be the precise, if reduced, number of maidens who might be sent to his chamber.
The rajah was a figure of dignified restraint, and evidently of sensibility and cultivation, concluded Hervey — in spite of his apparent jesting. His face was clean-shaven and fine-featured, his sallow complexion clear, and his shoulder-length hair was pulled back with slides. Around his eyes were darker rings, like those of the elephants to which he was so devoted. Perhaps it was a natural coloration, but so marked were they that Hervey thought them of cosmetic making. He was not tall, nothing like as big as the bazaar Hindoos who thronged the streets, yet he was possessed of a stature which, if it did not actually command respect, then otherwise induced it. Indeed he possessed an air of tranquillity that was at once appealing, while all about the palace there were images of the elephant, in statuary and inlays, which spoke too of the measured dignity of his court. And now, as they neared the menagerie, a big, old bull with full if fissured and yellowed tusks, his skin scarred from many fights, trod slowly into their path from behind an acacia screen. His mahout, standing nearby, shrivelled and as ancient as his charge, made low namaste as the rajah approached, but did nothing to take the animal in hand.
‘That is Seejavi,’ whispered Selden. ‘He was one of the late rajah’s war elephants. Now he is allowed free roam of the palace. His mahout is with him only because he has always been. Seejavi may trample anything and anyone he pleases.’
‘And does he?’ asked Hervey.
‘How are we to know? No-one would admit evidence of Seejavi’s ill behaviour.’
The rajah took a sugared favour from a silver tray which a khitmagar carried ready, and held it out in his palm — not at arm’s length, but close to, making him hostage to the elephant’s forbearance.
‘Your Highness,’ said Selden, more wearied than anxious, ‘I do urge more circumspection with Seejavi. He is old and may not always remember his place.’
The rajah smiled, without turning, and took another favour from the tray. ‘An elephant not remember, Mr Selden? The notion is an intriguing one. Seejavi would never be disloyal, of that I am sure.’
Selden made no reply.
The next voice was female. ‘You are too trusting, father. Constancy is no more an animal virtue than it is a human one.’
Both the appearing and appearance of the raj kumari was of some moment. Hitherto she had been hid by the acacia screen, a slender figure, of about Hervey’s age and not much less than his height, her skin lighter than the Madrasi women whose complexion he had admired at Fort George (so close in colour as they were to Jessye’s bay), though her hair was blacker and her eyes larger. She was, by any estimate, a beauty of considerable degree, and, after the formalities of presentation, both Hervey and Locke found themselves, temporarily, less than fluent in their replies to her questions — which she asked without any of the coyness or reservation they had been led to believe was the mark of Hindoo women.
At first they walked side by side along the aviary, and neither Hervey nor Locke felt able to look but ahead. When, however, she went a little in advance of them in order to attract the attention of a favourite peacock, Hervey saw that she wore not the saree but something divided, allowing her to walk with singular grace. In consequence he almost failed to hear the rajah’s enquiry as to how he liked the aviary, and thereafter he was all attention as they processed back to the palace down an avenue of deodars. ‘My grandfather grew them from seeds brought from a great hunting expedition to Kumaon,’ said the rajah, with no little pride.
The raj kumari herself had shown no dismay on seeing Locke’s face. She spoke with warm civility, unafraid to look at him fully as they talked of this and that brightly feathered species in the aviary. Hervey saw nothing but the same warmth as that of her father, nothing that suggested a need for the circumspection Selden had advocated.
The tamasha that evening was a regalement such that Hervey and Locke might never forget — as, indeed, was the rajah’s intention. The brilliance of the hundreds of candles and scented oil lamps, reflected by the white marble in the great dining chamber, seemed no less than the midday sun. The guests sat on cushions at a low table covered by a richly embroidered white cloth, on which were laid dishes of pomegranates, grapes and jujubes. To Hervey was accorded the honour of sitting on the rajah’s right, while Locke was seated to the raj kumari’s left, she herself being next to her father. Selden, who sat at the angle of the table, but in view of their host, had correctly predicted this arrangement, explaining to them that, unlike in other native, even princely, households, the raj kumari did not take a retiring role. Her mother, the ranee, had died within a year of labour — a conception for which there had been many years’ unanswered prayers — and the rajah had placed the overseeing of the palace in her trust from an early age, while he had withdrawn increasingly to his menagerie and his library. He had even shown less pleasure in the chase of late, though this was, thought Selden, because he disliked leaving the palace, fearing perhaps that on his return he would find it no longer in his hands, the possession instead of the nizam or one of his acolytes. Throughout his life, and his father’s before him, Haidarabad had laid claim to Chintal, a claim which, had not the late Maratha war diverted him, the nizam might by now have made good.
But this evening the rajah was in good spirits. Musicians in a gallery at the other end of the chamber played lively ragas, and there was laughter among the two dozen courtiers enjoying his hospitality. A welldrilled troop of khitmagars brought more fruit to the table: oranges, peeled and dusted with ginger, fingerlengths of tender young sugar cane, and mangoes whose soft, peach-coloured flesh and abundant juice especially became the evening’s sensuality.
‘I am informed, Captain Hervey,’ said the rajah, casting an eye over the procession, ‘that in England you would not begin a feast with sweet things, that you must earn sweetness, so to speak, by progression through much sourness — as in life itself. But in India we have no such coyness in our pleasures. We have each earned title to indulgence in this incarnation through preparation in earlier ones.’
Hervey was as much engaged by the elegance of the rajah’s phrasing as he was intrigued by his theology. ‘You know, sir,’ he replied, with considerable delicacy, ‘that our religion holds these things differently.’
‘And I shall look forward keenly to our being able to speak on these matters, for you are the son of a sadhu, a priest, I am informed — whereas Mr Selden, there,’ he nodded, smiling, ‘is as much an atheist as was my tutor.’
‘Your tutor an atheist, sir? Mr Selden informed me that he was a fellow of Cambridge.’
‘Oh, indeed — both. He was sent down along with Coleridge for his opinions. Do you like Coleridge’s poetry, Captain Hervey?’
‘Very much, sir,’ replied the latter, hoping to conceal his surprise at hearing of Coleridge here.
‘I am much diverted by the notion of his enlisting in the cavalry afterwards. It was not your regiment, was it, by some chance?’
‘No, sir,’ said Hervey, even more surprised. ‘His was the Fifteenth Light Dragoons, and mine the Sixth. He was, by his own admission, a very indifferent equestrian!’
‘It is as well, Captain Hervey, otherwise we should have been deprived of some sublime poetry.’
‘Just so, sir,’ agreed the other, but with a resigned smile, for the rajah evidently held the two to be incompatible occupations.
However, the rajah did not press the matter, returning instead to the subject of his gardens and menagerie, and the plans he had for their enlargement. The khitmagars entered once more in procession. ‘These will delight you especially, Captain Hervey,’ he smiled, as one of them proffered a salver. ‘Mandaliya. I have a cook from Bengal who makes it as no other I know. There is nothing else of worth in Bengal, I assure you, Captain Hervey!’ he added with an even broader smile.
‘He takes the entrails from only the youngest of lambs and then fills them with marrow and a mixture of spices known only to him, and then he roasts them over charcoal. They are the very apotheosis of taste, are they not?’
Hervey agreed readily, and he would have indulged himself liberally had he not a concern for how many such dishes he would have to savour before the feast was ended. He glanced across at Selden and saw him eating modestly, and then at Locke, who was attending to each dish as if it were his last.
‘Why are you come to India, Captain Hervey?’ asked the rajah suddenly, though without trace of anything but approval.
He sighed inwardly. He had no wish to deceive this generous and civilized man. ‘I believe you will have heard of Sir Arthur Wellesley?’ he began.
‘The Duke of Wellington?’ replied the rajah.
He was much embarrassed by his presuming the rajah’s ignorance. ‘I am very sorry, sir; I had no reason to suppose that the duke’s elevation to the peerage would have been of interest in Chintal.’
‘But indeed it is,’ replied the rajah. ‘The duke rid India of the Maratha plague — Sindhia and Barjee Rao, and the other devils. I met him once, in the company of his then more illustrious brother. I was gratified to see him made a marquess, and then duke. Are you acquainted with him?’
‘Not intimately, sir. I am recently appointed aide-decamp, a very junior capacity, and am sent here to learn the employment of the lance. We suffered from it at the hands of the French, and the duke intends forming lancer regiments forthwith.’
‘Indeed,’ was all that the rajah would say by reply, although after a while he appeared to remember his own lancers. ‘My sowars would be able to instruct you most ably,’ he said, nodding.
‘I am grateful, sir. I believe I have also heard that the nizam’s cavalry have lances.’ Hervey wished at once he had not said it — a clumsy stratagem.
The rajah, after the briefest flicker of consternation, recovered his composure. ‘You may know that we are to receive the nizam in Chintalpore in a month’s time,’ he said, dipping his fingers in a bowl of scented water.
‘Mr Selden so informed me, sir.’
‘We hope to show him some sport.’ And he embarked on a lengthy praise of Chintal’s hunting promise.
The musicians were by now less animated in their playing. A leisurely tala weaved its way in and out of the conversations around the rajah’s table, a perfect accompaniment to the sweet confections now brought by the khitmagars — sweeter even than the madhuparka in the Venetian glasses.
‘But on the matter of the Duke of Wellington’s bidding,’ said the rajah at length, and seemingly absently, ‘there may be some quality that the duke seeks in numbers: the nizam’s cavalry has the most lancers in all India.’
‘So I am informed, sir. But in terms of how well the weapon itself is handled, and how handily are the rissalahs trained, I understand the Company’s irregulars too have much to teach.’
The rajah nodded. ‘And in our own modest way, Chintal may boast of a handy rissalah. Indeed, you saw some upon your arrival today, did you not? Though they stood at the gates of the palace for ceremony.’
‘And, may I say, sir, their bearing does them great credit. I should much like to see them at exercise.’
‘Then you shall, Captain Hervey,’ replied the rajah. ‘You are our guest: I would not suspend any pleasure of yours that it is in my power to prolong.’
One of those pleasures was the fine claret which the rajah kept. But Hervey was abstemious, for not only was its taste ill-matched to the harlequin dishes paraded before them, he was uncertain of the potency of the madhuparka. He could afford no indiscretion which might suggest his mission were any more than he had declared, especially having once aroused, if not the rajah’s suspicion, then certainly his curiosity. The same was not the case with Locke, however, whose robust spirits seemed wholly pleasing nevertheless to the raj kumari.
The rajah spoke of hunting again: Hervey would not leave Chintal without a tigerskin, he promised, as bowls filled with boiled rice, dyed with saffron and much spiced, were placed before them. They talked of tiger and leopard and the wild boar, and the differing dangers and pleasures in the pursuit of each. And much satisfaction the rajah seemed to gain from Hervey’s keen anticipation.
A light soup followed, and then all was cleared, bowls of hot water scented with lotus flowers were brought, and the rajah began speaking of his stables, of the merits and otherwise of the Arab and the Turkoman when compared with the native breeds — the Kathiawar, Marwari and Waziri. And the air was then filled with yet more, and different, scents as perfumed dishes of curds were laid before them, and the musicians once again became lively, an insistent tabla presaging a turn in the course of the evening. The rajah’s guests ate greedily, even after so much, and when the curds were gone a whole army of khitmagars crowded in to sweep away the residue of the feast so that the entertainment might begin.
The raj kumari herself had arranged their evening’s diversions, explained the rajah. First came an elaborate nautch in which twelve tall, extravagantly dressed girls moved about the wide floor of the banquet chamber with a grace the like of which Hervey had never seen, as if floating — bending this way and that like tall grass in a breeze. From neck to ankle, they were aflash with mirrors, bracelets and rings, and in each bare navel shone an emerald.
‘They are come from Maharashtra for the delectation of the nizam when he visits,’ explained the rajah. ‘I am pleased to see you approve, Captain Hervey.’
How could he not approve? ‘I do not think I ever beheld a more beautiful sight, Your Highness!’
Henry Locke was altogether transported, and even Selden seemed rapt. The nautch girls danced for a quarter of an hour without respite, leisurely in all their movements, mistresses of time as well as of their sinewy muscles; until, though it was grown very warm, their spirited climax of much shaking and turning brought to a sudden end the now frantic raga — and with it the prostration of the dancers. There was great applause and calls of approval, and the dancers stood as one and bowed low to their audience. That they did not smile only added to their allure. Truly, he confided again, he had never seen anything so exquisite!
The entertainment next took a less elevated form. A half-naked, wiry little man entered carrying a basket and a caged mongoose. ‘A vulgar thing of the bazaar, Captain Hervey,’ smiled the rajah indulgently, ‘to fascinate the indigent of the country and visitor alike. You may now write home to tell of your seeing a snake-charmer.’
He was puzzled by the rajah’s need to explain, but thought it kindly meant. The wiry little man placed the basket not a dozen paces before them, and the cage to one side, then sat on the floor, crossing his legs. He took a pipe from the waist of his dhoti, removed the lid of the basket and began to play. The mongoose at once began jumping up and down excitedly, urinating as it did so — to the amusement of the guests — and soon from the basket came the head of a snake, drawn, it seemed, by the pipe’s lugubrious melody. It was not, to Hervey’s mind, of any great size, but it was no rat snake, for its spreading hood was unmistakable.
‘The cobra di capello, Captain Hervey,’ said the rajah; ‘prettily named is it not? — by the Portuguese when they built their missions on the Malabar coast.’
Hervey recalled it well enough from his schoolroom lessons in natural history.
The rajah sensed that he had expected to see a more impressive reptile, and sounded a note of warning. ‘Be assured, Captain Hervey, that the cobra, if its fangs could pierce the skin, has enough venom to kill an elephant.’
Hervey looked suitably warned. Indeed, he looked mildly alarmed.
‘Do not concern yourself though,’ smiled the rajah. ‘The cobra’s mouth is sewn together.’
The raj kumari leaned Hervey’s way a little. ‘To see the largest — the king of cobras — Captain Hervey,’ she began conspiratorially, ‘you must go into the forest. There it is called the hamadryad. You must understand why?’
He did. But Locke looked puzzled, leaving Hervey to whisper as best he could, ‘Wood nymph — Greeks — dies with the tree? Remember?’
Locke nodded in faint but indifferent recollection of his Shrewsbury classicals.
Once the rajah was satisfied that Hervey understood the principles of the art before him, he waved for the little man to cease his playing. The cobra descended at once into the basket, and the mongoose, which had not let up its jumping and turning throughout the performance, settled quietly on the floor of its cage.
‘My groom would be delighted by the mongoose, Your Highness,’ said Hervey, smiling. ‘He is inordinately fond of ferrets, an animal very akin to this.’
‘Is he here in Chintalpore with you?’ asked the rajah.
‘No, sir: he remained in Guntoor with my charger. But I am assured he will soon arrive.’
‘I am very glad of it, for I hope that you will avail yourself of our hospitality for some time yet,’ for, declared the rajah, he was in constant want of conversation since the demise of his tutor some years past.
And then curiously, as if to be done with every vestige of the grace and dignity that the Maharashtri nautch had given the evening, there came a raucous chorus of voices the like of which Hervey had never heard, accompanied by cymbals and tambours in a fearful cacophony. The voices wore sarees of the gaudiest colours imaginable, festooned with bangles, necklaces and ankle bells. They were taller even than the nautch girls, and older. Some, indeed, were counted in riper years. They were as thin as laths, without any of the voluptuousness of the nautch. And their singing — if such it could rightly be called — was incomprehensible, their husky voices rhythmically repeating words that Hervey sensed had little meaning. They were to the nautch, indeed, as sackcloth was to silk.
They did not dance, they cavorted. Cavorted for a full five minutes. And their gestures became increasingly lewd until the rajah, smiling indulgently, clapped his hands and shooed them away, at which they besieged the seated audience with little begging bowls — and made hissing noises if they considered the contributions mean. As they recessed to the outer chamber, keeping up the cacophony still, Hervey, astonished by so tawdry (but undeniably amusing) an intrusion, asked the raj kumari who they were. She, like her father before, smiled indulgently. ‘They are known variously, but we call them hijdas.’
Hervey was unenlightened. ‘Meaning?’
‘It is an Urdu word — “neither one thing nor the other”.’
Still Hervey had not understood.
‘Neither male nor female,’ she explained with a sigh.
His embarrassment made her smile.
‘They appear from nowhere at gatherings such as this — weddings, tamashas. They make a great deal of noise and accept money to go away. They always seem to know when there is such an assembly, but I suspect that your Mr Selden told them of this evening. He enjoys their confidence.’
Hervey looked across at Selden, who seemed content.
‘There is a small company of hijdas in Chintalpore, though their greatest number is in Haidarabad, for they are in truth more relics of the Mughal court.’
‘Will they come when the nizam visits?’ asked Hervey.
‘You may be assured of it,’ replied the raj kumari with a smile; ‘whether invited or not. And they will expect generous alms from so rich a ruler and his following.’
When the last strains of the hijdas’ chorus were gone, the rajah and the raj kumari took their leave, satisfied that the banquet had been a worthy gratuity for the service which Hervey had rendered the favoured elephant. The rajah looked forward, he insisted once again, to being able to continue that hospitality in a manner especially appropriate for one of Hervey’s calling, ‘for I believe you will hold with me that hunting is the most noble of our pleasures.’
Hervey thanked him fulsomely.
The raj kumari bowed, smiling also, and thanked him once more for his present of the tushes. ‘They are a handsome trophy, Captain Hervey. And you won them without permitting my Gita to suffer a single mark. Truly, the English are not to be trifled with!’
‘Take a turn with me about the gardens,’ said Selden as the khansamah’s men began the lengthy business of extinguishing the candles and oil lamps.
Hervey was glad of both the air and the chance of broaching at last the subject of his being there. When they were outside, and some distance from the ears of the palace itself, Selden gave his opinion of the evening. ‘The rajah has, quite evidently, taken to you. But I observed him closely as he questioned you on your purpose in coming to India, and I don’t think he was disposed to believing that your mission is concerned solely with the lance. As, indeed, do I not. The rajah is perforce both hospitable to and suspicious of strangers. He knows — without doubt — of the Wellesleys’ late affinity with the nizam, and it will not be beyond possibility that he is thinking of your being an agent of Haidarabad.’
This he had not imagined. He felt at once anxious as he realized that had he first made contact with Bazzard in Calcutta he would have been forewarned of this diplomatic complication.
‘The Pindarees are again making depredations on Chintal’s borders,’ continued Selden. ‘The rajah bought them off last year but they’ve paid his gold little heed. It can’t be long before they come within, for his forces would be hard-pressed to deal with them without leaving Chintalpore open to attack from the west, from Haidarabad.’
Hervey looked about him, anxious there might be ears closer than the palace. His mind was beginning to race and he tried hard to check it as it dawned on him how awkward was his predicament — and of his own making. ‘Selden, may we speak in absolute confidence?’
‘Here is as good as anywhere,’ shrugged the salutri.
‘I mean, may I divulge things to you confident they will go no further?’
Selden paused only for an instant. ‘I would never betray anything that might harm my country — on no account. But if it is something that might harm the rajah then I beg you would not try my loyalty.’
Hervey took the plunge he knew must come. ‘The duke has title to several jagirs in Chintal. They’re governed on his behalf by an official of the Company’s in Calcutta.’
‘Is this of great moment?’ asked Selden, the tone a shade bemused.
‘I don’t know. All I have need to know is that the duke wishes to dispose of them in as discreet a manner as possible.’ Never did Hervey imagine he would dislike a business so.
‘If he has an agent in Calcutta, why should you be concerned in this?’
‘Again, I don’t know why. I understand that not even the jagirs’ steward here in Chintal knows their true ownership. It’s the duke’s wish that they are disposed of as advantageously as possible, within Chintal, and that their former title remain privy.’
Selden inclined his head in a manner that suggested he was now well apprised of Hervey’s purpose. ‘And you wish me to assist in this disposal?’
‘Yes,’ said Hervey quietly, but emphatically.
Selden sucked his cheeks. ‘So your meeting with me was not coincident: you sought me out?’
‘The meeting on the Sukri was entirely coincident, but my orders were that I should go to Calcutta and meet an agent of the duke’s. He was to see to my entry here. I told you about our diversion to Madras; it seemed opportune when I did meet you, and little point then in my going to Calcutta. It was a misjudgement, I see now.’
‘Indeed,’ nodded Selden, ‘quite a misjudgement! There might no longer be the glittering path ahead, then?’ The tone was of sympathy, even if a little brutal.
Hervey hardly needed reminding of the personal consequences.
‘And so, who now has the title deeds?’ he asked, wanting to pick something from the ashes.
‘I do,’ replied Hervey, quick to respond to the suggestion of help. ‘But since they bear the duke’s name they will need to be transferred through a third party. My instructions were to request that you yourself fulfil that role. And, further, that you ensure any reference to the duke in the land registry is expunged.’
Selden smiled. ‘Hervey, you — or, I suppose, the duke’s agents — astonish me. Assuming that I would have access to the registry, you would wish me, say, to spill a bottle of ink on the offending page — or to set the entire ledger alight?’
‘Whatever is necessary,’ he replied bluntly; ‘but my principal had hoped that the original document might be delivered up to him. He is quite willing to meet all expenses.’ This last troubled him. He had rehearsed it many times so that it might be rendered lightly, but it smacked none the less of a crude bribe.
Selden saved him further discomfort by ignoring it — at least, on the surface. ‘My dear Hervey, I think it time I made a clean breast of one or two things too.’ They sat on a low wall by one of the fountains, its fall of water a further aid to their seclusion. ‘Now,’ he began, dabbing at the edge of his mouth with a silk square, ‘you must not suppose me to occupy any great office of state here — or even position of influence.’
Hervey looked worried. ‘But—’
‘Let me finish. I am the rajah’s salutri. There are few of us in India, and most of them are quacks, men who would scarce make a good farrier’s assistant. I know my worth in this respect, and so, I flatter myself, does the rajah. I am the only Englishman at his court, and since he places his trust in my facility with his horses he is inclined to seek my opinion on other matters. He’s not obliged to take it, of course.’
Hervey was not now so discouraged, but it was far from what he might have wished. ‘And do you have dealings with the Company?’
‘I am not a spy, if that’s what you mean. Periodically I have given my opinion on this matter or that when in Calcutta — as any loyal subject of the King would.’
Hervey thought for a moment, for Selden evidently had more to give. ‘Are you therefore able to help me dispose of the jagirs?’ he asked plainly.
Selden smiled again. ‘One of the many things I have learned in India is that what one supposes to be a secret is known as often in the bazaars.’
‘Are you telling me that the duke’s title to them is known of?’
‘Not, I suspect, in the bazaars, but the rajah knows — certainly.’
‘Oh,’ sighed Hervey, now even more anxious that his misjudgement would see his mission come to nought.
‘The jagirs are, indeed, something of an insurance to him.’
‘How so?’
‘The rajah has always supposed that as long as the Wellesley family held title to land in Chintal the country would be secure from predation by others.’
‘You mean he expects the Company would be prevailed on to come to his aid?’
‘Just so.’
‘I’m astonished. It would be little better than—’
‘There you go again, Matthew Hervey: false civilization, still to be sweated out!’
He frowned. ‘You will tell me next that the duke is somehow a party to this pretence!’
‘I would presume no such thing,’ replied Selden, a little archly. ‘But I tell you two things — or, rather, I ask you one thing first.’
‘Very well then,’ said Hervey, squarely.
‘Ask yourself why the duke has jagirs here in the first place.’
‘Is there reason why he should not? His family has wealth, and he was here a half-dozen years.’
‘Quite so,’ conceded Selden. ‘You have heard of Seringapatam?’
‘Of course: the Sixth still spoke of it when I joined.’
‘And well they might — the loot was prodigious!’
‘What has that to do with the duke? He put a stop to as much of it as he could, as is commonly known.’
Selden looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘See here, Hervey: I have no wish to sully the name of a great man — and one you serve so admirably. But there are persistent stories in India that he sequestered some of the prize-money that should by rights have gone to General Baird, the man whom he superseded after the capture of the fortress, and it’s supposed that the Chintal jagirs are part of that… shall we say, artifice? Do you not suppose that that might account in some degree for the needy discretion in disposing of them?’
Hervey protested that there were too many suppositions.
‘And I must further inform you,’ pressed Selden, ‘that the jagirs themselves have yielded meagre revenues these past years. The rajah supplements them handsomely.’
Slowly it began to occur to him that he might have been kept in the dark by Colonel Grant for no better reason than to conceal something that was — at best — unbecoming. And then he tumbled to the notion — but prayed it was not true — that his mission to gauge the effectiveness of the nizam’s army was no more than a diversion. He sighed heavily. How clever of the duke’s chief of intelligence if it were so, for in conniving with him at the diversion of the lance, he diverted himself from the truth that the business of the jagirs was Grant’s real purpose — and an infamous one at that.
Still he did not dare share this with Selden. Yet his look must have spoken of some sense of betrayal, for the salutri placed a hand on his shoulder and warned him of the consequences of judging things too keenly. ‘For I dare say the duke believed he did nothing dishonourable. He broke the Marathas at what might have been no little cost to his reputation, or even his life, had things not gone well. “To the victor the spoils”, Hervey!’
It was all supposition in any case. And, indeed, Hervey could ill afford too many scruples in his position.
Selden was prepared to agree with him — for the purposes, at least, of lifting his spirits for the time being. ‘Who, by the way, were you to meet with in Calcutta?’
Hervey wondered if this were information he might not rightly divulge. ‘I think it better if—’
‘It wasn’t Bazzard, was it?’
‘Why do you name him?’
Hervey’s surprise encouraged Selden to assume it was. ‘Because he is the writer who forwards the revenues to London.’
‘I should not say more.’
‘It makes no difference, my dear fellow,’ frowned Selden, ‘for Bazzard has been dead these past three months.’
‘Dead? You mean… killed?’
‘By the fever.’
Hervey saw at once some mitigation of his misjudgement. Going to Calcutta would have proved fruitless after all. A pity he had written already to Grant telling him it was his own choice. But at the same time the death of Bazzard meant the loss of his best means of recovering the situation. A picket officer’s duty in the Paris garrison seemed suddenly attractive compared with aiglets. At length he steeled himself to his purpose in Chintalpore: ‘Do I assume from this you are unable, and unwilling, to help me dispose of the jagirs?’
Selden let out a deep sigh. ‘Hervey, I’m not sure I would do this for anyone else. Let us not be too sentimental by recalling Androcles and the lion, but you were rare among your fellow officers in showing me more than sufferance. I have no notion how to begin the jagirs business, but begin I shall. It will take time, though. And meanwhile I advise you to be most attentive to the rajah, and not to give him any grounds to suspect you have come on business other than the lance. Play the simple soldier, in heaven’s name!’