The Game - Laurie R. King [123]
Wishing I had a torch, or even an old-fashioned dark-lantern, to supplement the sparse illumination that came through the barred window, I felt my way past chairs and tables until at last my fingers encountered the familiar shape. I was taking a risk, and not only that of some curious and sharp-eared passer-by. If the agent in Hijarkot thought it curious that this rural outpost should be sending a message at this time of night—and in English, as I couldn’t trust my Hindi spelling; if he made enquiries instead of just sending it on; if the maharaja got news of it . . . Well, in for a penny, I thought, and began to tap out the Morse address.
I made it back to my snoring neighbours, and managed to doze away for a while myself, in between listening nervously for the approach of constabulary footsteps and royal motorcars, but hard hands did not seize me, and the disgruntled pony and I were on our way before the sun.
The next caravanserai, the last before the border, came in the middle of the afternoon, but I bypassed its dubious charms, hoping to make Hijarkot that same day. However, we ran out of light well short of the border, and rather than press forward and off a cliff, I fed and hobbled my footsore companion and curled up at its side, continuing on with daylight.
Unfortunately, this made me an uncharacteristically early border-crosser, hours ahead of those who had stopped the night in the serai, and when dealing with officialdom, one ought never appear out of the ordinary. It is difficult to remain amiable and apologetic when every muscle in one’s body is straining towards action, but to allow shortness of temper only invited reciprocity on the part of the men with the red turbans, and I had to get across that border. So I smiled and repeated my story about an aged grandmother’s urgent summons to her bed-side, and allowed the pony to eat the chrysanthemums growing near the guard-house door.
Finally the two border guards got tired of me and waved me through. I kept the smile plastered on my face as I rode on, although it felt more of a grimace by the time I entered the outskirts of Hijarkot. I watched for the boy Bindra, thinking that he might be sitting by the side of the road, but he was not there, and although I would have expected his absence would be a relief, in fact it was just one more vexation to rub at my raw nerves. When a uniformed British officer appeared on his shiny big horse in front of me, angled to cut me off, I felt like pulling my knife on him.
“Miss Russell?” the officer said.
The unexpectedness of that name in this place made me startle the pony into a panic, jibbing around in the street until I could get it under control and facing the officer again.
“Good Lord, Captain Nesbit! How on earth did you get here so quickly?”
“I was in Delhi, rather than Simla, so I didn’t have to waste half a day in getting down from the hills. Come, let us get off the street.”
We rode out of the city to a nondescript villa in the middle of broad fields of pulse and corn. A syce took the two horses, and Nesbit led me to a room furnished with a narrow bed, some prints of English landscapes, and a door leading to a bath-room.
“You’d probably like to bath,” he said. “If you need clothes, there are things in the drawers. When you’re finished, the breakfast room is down the hall to your left. I’ll be there.”
As the stinking, travel-grey garments on my back were the only clothing I had with me, I pawed through the drawers in gratitude, coming up with an odd assortment of English and native garments that smelt deliciously of sun and the iron. I scrubbed, rinsed, and towelled vigorously until my skin was nearly its normal colour, pulled on the trousers and shirt I had found, and bound my damp hair in a turban-cloth. There was even a tooth-brush, which I had neglected to bring from the mirrored wagon and had missed terribly.
Nesbit was sitting at a table with