His eagerness drew a laugh from Kesri and he made sure that the boy was included in the company’s contingent of fifers and drummers. And when the fifers made their first appearance at the parade ground he knew he had made a good choice: with his bright eyes and jaunty step young Dicky Miller was just the kind of lad who was likely to keep up the unit’s spirits.
*
After his abrupt dismissal from Mrs Burnham’s sewing room, Zachary walked back to the budgerow with his head a-whirl, hardly aware of what he was doing. He had known all along, of course, that his visits to the boudoir would end one day, but he could never have imagined that it would happen so suddenly — and now that it had, he realized that a proper period of preparation would have diminished his pain and bewilderment only by a very small measure, which was that he would not have had to cope also with the bitterness of being denied the last night of leave-taking that he had been promised.
The truth was that despite all of Mrs Burnham’s warnings he had never abandoned the hope that their liaison would somehow continue, in secret: it had never crossed his mind that he might one day be thrown overboard without a plank or raft to hold on to. But along with anger, bitterness, grief and jealousy, he was aware also of a powerful sense of gratitude towards Mrs Burnham for all that she had given him, money being the least of it; nor was his admiration of her in any way diminished by his abrupt discharge.
This too served to deepen his confusion, making him wonder about the nature of their connection: what exactly was it that had come into being between them? It was not love, surely, for that word had never been used by either of them; nor was it only lust, for her voice, her words and the things she talked about were at least as bewitching to him as her body. She had opened a window into a world of wealth and luxury where the finest and most voluptuous pleasures were those that were stolen — and it was that very act of thievery, as when he was in her bed, that made them so delectable, so intoxicating. It was as though she had placed his feet on the threshold of this world: all that remained was for him to make his way in — and he was determined to do it, if only to prove to her that he was capable of it.
But how?
Defeated by the question, he went off to a bowsing-ken in Kidderpore and did not return till late at night.
On waking the next day he realized that it behooved him to go to the big house to pay his respects to the Burra Sahib. But he kept putting it off, unsure of whether he would be able to maintain a normal demeanour, fearing that he would betray himself with some chance word or gesture.
But as the hours went by it became ever clearer that it was by staying away that he was most likely to draw suspicion to himself. So in the late afternoon he screwed up his courage and walked over to the mansion to ask for Mr Burnham.
A khidmatgar led him to a withdrawing room, where the Burra Sahib was conferring with an important-looking gent. As Zachary stood waiting, hat in hand, the force of the tycoon’s presence began to work on him like a spelclass="underline" Mr Burnham’s commanding stature, his wide, masterful chest, his shining beard, and even the swell of his belly helped to create an aura such that to gain his good opinion seemed a prize worth striving for.
Nor, somewhat to his own surprise, was Zachary beset by pangs of guilt or jealousy as he had feared he might be. To the contrary he was aware instead of a peculiar kind of sympathy, a sense of kinship even, born of the knowledge that neither he nor Mr Burnham would ever be able to lay full claim to his wife’s heart, which had perhaps forever been lost to her first love.
When at last Mr Burnham turned to him, Zachary shook his hand with unfeigned warmth.
‘I’m very glad to see you, sir.’
‘I’m glad to see you too, Reid. Are you finished with the budgerow yet?’
‘Not quite, sir, but I will be very soon.’
‘Good! I’m glad to hear it. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll come by to take a look.’
With that Mr Burnham turned on his heel and disappeared into his daftar.
This exchange, brief though it was, was hugely energizing for Zachary; he began to work harder than ever before, polishing, hammering, carving, holystoning. Sometimes, when he stopped to rest, his mind would wander, and then it would seem to him that the last few months had passed in a kind of delirium in which nothing had been real except the feverish voluptuousness of his nights with Mrs Burnham: whether he was with her or not, her voice had always been in his head; even when he was in his own unkempt bed, he had felt himself to be cradled in her satiny sheets.
Had his memories of those nights been a matter of the mind alone then he would have been able to deal with them without too much difficulty. But his body too had acquired a great trove of memories, and having grown accustomed to the fleshly pleasures of the boudoir, it often cried out insistently for release. But in this matter he was unyielding. Mrs Burnham’s words on the subject were loud in his ears and following her advice he began to eat judiciously, subsisting largely on crackers and bland, unspiced foods. He started to exercise vigorously, with dumb-bells and weights, and after rousing his body to a great heat he would shock it with a long, cold bath. At night, when the fear of lapsing became especially powerful, he would tie his hands to the bedstead, to prevent them from straying, as recommended by Dr Tissot. One evening he even attended a prayer meeting in the city, and for the first time in his life he understood what the preacher was talking about, what he really meant when he talked about Man’s fallen nature, and the devil that lurked in every heart; he too was among the worshippers who left the meeting armed with a precious trove of fear and dread.
And sure enough, just as Mrs Burnham had predicted, his mounting fears and anxieties began to work a slow but steady change in him; he started to see why it was more important to hoard than to waste, he understood why accumulating was more important than spending, and slowly he came to be filled with a great disgust for the life he had led before — a life of profligacy and poverty, in which he had wasted his mind and body in pointless pursuits. He longed to leave that life behind him — and again arose that confounded question: but how?
One day he saw the Burnham carriage rolling by, with both master and mistress seated within, and he yearned to prove to both of them that he was not ‘just a mystery’; that he too could be a Burra Sahib with a mansion, a carriage and ships to his name.
But how?
He could think of no answer. After many hours of fruitlessly racking his brain he went off to Kidderpore and bought himself a bottle of rum.
Ten
Now that they knew where they were going, the balamteers talked of little else but China. And the more they spoke of it the faster the rumours flew: it was as if the very name — Maha-Chin — were enough to stir up elemental fears in them. They knew nothing about China of course, except that the people there were different in every way, not least in appearance — they looked like Gurkhas, some said, and this too was cause for disquiet. The sepoys were well aware of the Gurkhas’ fearsome reputation as fighters; many of them had relatives who had fought in the East India Company’s wars against the Gurkha empire some twenty-two years before. One of the naiks in B Company was the son of a sepoy who had died at the Battle of Nalapani, where the Gurkhas had inflicted a severe defeat on the British. Like all professional soldiers, the sepoys had long memories: they knew that a few decades earlier the Gurkhas, for all their martial prowess, had been thoroughly defeated and subjugated by the army of Maha-Chin ka Faghfoor — the Emperor of China.
All of this created misgivings and these were compounded by speculation and rumours: some sepoys put it about that the Chinese had supernatural powers and were masters of the occult; others said that they possessed secret weapons and were ingenious in spreading confusion among their enemies.