The Game - Laurie R. King [93]
My first-timer’s luck did not give me a second pig that morning, although by morning’s end I had to admit that it was indeed a sport rather than a means of disposing of pests, with its own demands, skill, and even artistry. Rather like a high-speed variety of bull-fighting, with the horse and rider themselves taking the place of the cape.
With the sun directly overhead, the riders began to gather, handing the servants their spears and talking with varying degrees of excitement. Captain Greaves, his polo-playing cousin, and our host were old hands with the spear, and had taken five pigs between them, but only one of the others, the partner of Thomas Goodheart, had landed a blow. In his case the pig had run off with the spear trailing behind him; the beaters were tracking the wounded animal through the scrub.
The morning’s exercise had put paid to the evening’s excesses—I was famished, and hoped that our gathering together marked an impending meal. And so it proved. We rode a mile back to the lakeside that we had passed earlier, to find that in the hours since we had last seen the grassy field that stretched down to the water, a transformation had occurred. Half a hundred guests, attended by an equal number of servants, lounged about on cushions and brocaded divans that had been arranged around a silken tent the size of a minor dormitory, from whose open sides came tantalising odours and a glimpse of linen-draped tables. The two cheetahs, still wearing their ruby collars, crouched with their attendants; golden cages filled with songbirds had been hung from the trees. More usefully, a cart carrying a tank of warm water and scented soap had been set up at the back of the tent, along with mirror, face flannels, and all the comforts of a bath short of the actual tub. I scrubbed my hands, wound my hair back into place, and was claimed instantly by a servant as I stepped out of the enclosure.
Inside the tent, I accepted a glass of champagne and my attendant conjured up a silver tray with flatware and an empty plate, and moved along the tables at my elbow, arranging my choices on the luminous bone china. To my relief, the meal was considerably less oppressive than that of the night before, a buffet composed of English sandwiches, soups hot and cold, and several kinds of curry. My plate and tray filled to excess, I shook my head at the offer of more and walked over to where the Goodhearts sat, their padded stools and divans shaded by the wide branches of a tree and protected from the ground by layers of priceless Oriental carpets. My attendant arranged cushions and fiddled with the silver tray, unfolding a pair of supports that raised it a few inches from the ground. He draped my table napkin over my lap, positioned the table-tray in front of me, and retreated, lingering nearby to fill my glass and fetch additional temptations.
The tank—what I would call a lake—covered several acres, and had been in existence long enough that large trees lined its borders. Reeds stretched out into the water, sheltering a wide variety of birds, from tiny green things no larger than a butterfly to slow-moving storks. A princely barge shaped like a swan lay moored to one side, simply begging to be taken seriously, although it looked like a rich man’s jest.
To be a prince in British India must, I reflected, be an uneasy thing. The knowledge that, but for this foreign power, one would be fully a king had to cause some degree of frustration, some sense that despite the riches and the honours, despite being (as Nesbit had put it) “above British law,” one’s life was essentially composed of empty ritual. A proud man like the maharaja of Khanpur surely had to chafe at his enforced impotence, and a certain resentment against the Crown