THE CURSE OF KALI - 3

CURSE OF KALI

AUBREY BLANKENHAGEN

Chapter 14

Two days after the awkward scene with Isabel de Silva, Rosita fell ill. At first she was merely out of sorts, feeling queasy and with a loss of her usually robust appetite. Helen wondered if it was the sudden heat and insisted that Rosita should rest in her bedroom, cooled continuously by the punkah and dampened blinds at the windows. However, her symptoms became more acute. Rosita complained of tingling in her mouth, dulled sight and hearing and Helen noticed that her breathing was difficult and despite the heat, she was shivering. Helen suspected that her beloved friend had been poisoned.

Her first task was to give her a strong emetic and regardless of the heat, to keep Rosita warm. The punkah was stopped and the wet blinds removed and when the vomiting ceased, Helen made Rosita drink a glass of strong brandy. She seemed to be better by evening but Helen, nevertheless, sent Ram Das to fetch Dr. Graham from the fort.

‘I believe you have diagnosed poisoning correctly, Helen. Mrs. Llewellyn’s symptoms suggest some sort of poisonous irritant, but what?’ questioned the Scottish doctor.

‘I’ll have to monitor her breathing, carefully. If she continues to vomit, I’ll administer the emetic by enema. Do you agree?’ Helen asked Dr. Graham.

‘Yes, that would be the best and perhaps a more drastic antidote will not be necessary if the poison is flushed out of her system. I’ll call again tomorrow, if she is no better.’

Rosita had a restless night and by morning, her breathing was once again difficult and it was clear that despite all the treatment, the poison was still in her system.

Helen, at her wit’s end, remembered Dr. Patel at the clinic. The Parsi physician had specialised in tropical diseases and poisoning from snake bites and perhaps he could identify this poison.

Dr. Patel, to Helen’s surprise, listened to Helen’s description of the patient’s symptoms, took one look at Rosita and then starting searching her room.

‘What are you looking for, Doctor?’ enquired a puzzled Helen.

‘A plant … ah, here it is, just as I thought.’ He picked up a potted plant which stood concealed behind Rosita’s dresser and looked deceptively innocent with its profusion of pale yellow flowers.

‘This plant is of the monkshood family but even more toxic. Your description of the lady’s symptoms - tingling of the mouth and throat and impairment of sight and hearing - are common indications of poisoning by this plant, but how was the poison ingested? That is what we must find out,’ said the Parsi doctor.

‘But I ordered all plants to be removed from Mrs. Llewellyn’s bedroom when her breathing became impaired,’ said Helen, wondering why this particular plant was secreted behind the dresser and how it had come into Rosita’s possession.

‘I have some tincture of belladonna at the clinic that is the antidote, Lady French. But we must hurry before Mrs. Llewellyn’s lungs collapse. Be prepared to give her artificial respiration if her breathing fails before I return,’ said Dr. Patel as he hurried out of the room.

His horse must have had wings, because he was soon back with the tincture. Helen measured out thirty drops, the first dose she administered by enema because Rosita was still nauseous and when in twenty minutes Rosita’s breathing was less strained, she repeated the dose by mouth every half hour.

At last after two hours, Rosita’s colour returned, her breathing was back to normal and an exhausted Helen turned to Dr. Patel, ‘How can I thank you, Dr. Patel? You have saved my dear friend’s life. I knew it was some sort of poisoning but never dreamed it could have been caused by a plant. I am afraid my medical knowledge failed me when it was most needed.’

‘Do not blame yourself, Doctor French. I worked for a while amongst the tribal peoples of Assam and this plant was used extensively against their enemies. I soon came to recognise the symptoms, but not before I had lost a few patients, myself. I believe it is important that you discover how the plant came into Mrs. Llewellyn’s possession and how she might have

ingested the poison.’

For the next two days, Helen hardly left Rosita’s side, except to prepare nourishing broths for her. She was still so weak and Helen was afraid to leave her alone, or to designate the preparation of her food to anyone else.

Gavin returned and found his wife sitting beside Rosita’s bed exhausted and trying desperately to keep awake. He had returned by way of the fort and been advised by Dr. Graham of the near tragic events at his home.

‘Helen, how is Rosita? Dr. Graham told me what had happened,’ and forgetting their bitter quarrel, Gavin knelt down beside his wife and took her in his arms.

The strength of his arms, her weariness and her sudden relief that he was by her side again, swept away all Helen’s reserves and her pent up emotions gave way to desperate sobs, that seemed to tear at the core of her being as she clung to Gavin.

Gavin rocked her gently, ‘Hush, my little sweetheart, our darling Rosita is going to be fine and I am here now to look after both of you. You are so exhausted and must sleep.’

Gavin lifted his wife in his arms and laying her gently on the chaise lounge, plumped up a cushion under her head and covered her with his jacket. The smell of sandalwood and tobacco filled Helen’s nostrils and it was as if Gavin was still holding her. Half asleep she murmured, ‘Don’t leave us Gavin, I am afraid someone is trying to…’ Her words trailed off as she fell into a deep sleep and Gavin wondered why his intrepid Helen was afraid. What had happened here whilst he was away?

Rosita recovered but was unable to explain how the poisonous plant had been secreted in her room and had no recollection of even seeing it.

Helen recalling Isabel’s acrimonious argument with Rosita, had her suspicions that the Goanese woman was in some way responsible for her friend’s illness, but she had no proof and Isabel seemed as alarmed and distressed as everyone else at Rosita’s illness. How could she inform Gavin of her suspicions? In his defence of Isabel, he might reveal the depth of his feelings for the woman, which Helen would be unable to ignore and which she was not yet ready to face.

But events in a few days time soon persuaded Helen that it was not only Rosita’s life, but her own which was endangered.

The weather had been very warm, the air still and sultry, the sky tinged a greenish yellow. Helen was half asleep on the chaise lounge in Rosita’s bedroom in the afternoon, when the settee suddenly tipped over and she was hurled across the room. She reached out her hands to stop herself hitting the wall and then became aware that the bedroom floor was heaving and tilting and Rosita’s large oak bed was sliding dangerously towards the window. The house was swaying and trembling as if a giant hand had it in its grasp and was shaking it vigourously. Sounds of falling masonry and splintering glass could be heard from somewhere in the house, combined with the unearthly sounds of human and animal cries of terror.

Rosita’s bed had come to rest just feet from the window and the poor woman was sitting bolt upright with a look of abject terror on her face, praying loudly in Spanish and exhorting God, the Virgin Mary and all the angels and saints to save them.

Helen cupped her hands over her head for protection from falling plaster and like a drunk reeled over to Rosita’s bed. She knew that they were not safe in these upstairs rooms and would have to make their way down the staircase to the comparative safety of the garden. The tremors had stopped momentarily and half dragging, half carrying Rosita, Helen tried the door but the frame had buckled and the catch was jammed.

Even as she looked around for some implement to force the catch, the door burst open and Gavin stood there, white faced and dishevelled, surveying the two terrified women and the chaos of the room.

‘Quick, Helen, give Rosita to me. I will carry her downstairs and you must follow me closely. This old house is built on solid foundations, but another tremor may bring the roof crashing down,’ said Gavin, his usually calm voice now reflecting the urgency of the situation.

The hallway was full of dust from falling plaster and broken glass and Gavin urged Helen to step carefully. Here and there, the balustrades had twisted and broken and Helen following closely behind her husband, prayed that the calm would continue until they had reached the bottom of the stairs.

All the servants were already out on the lawn and Ram Das brought a chair from the verandah for Rosita.

Helen became aware of the distressed neighing of the horses and ran towards the stable block, where she guessed the syce was trying to calm the nervous animals.

Gavin had already gone on before her and was shouting instructions to the syce. Helen saw him come out of the half-ruined building with one of the horses and then the earth began to shake and twist again and she was knocked to her knees.

Gavin was shouting, ‘Christ Almighty, Helen look out!’ Helen felt a hand in her back and half turning around, saw Isabel de Silva just behind her, the woman’s amber eyes glinting malevolently, her teeth bared in a cruel smile. Helen looked down and perceived, too late, the fissure opening in front of her. The pressure on her back intensified and Helen found herself falling into the yawning chasm. Desperately she struggled to hold onto the crumbling sides of the rift, when suddenly her arms were almost pulled from their sockets by strong, brown hands lifting her. Ram Das, with almost superhuman strength, was dragging Helen out of the abyss, which even as they watched, was closing again.

Then Gavin was kneeling beside her, gathering her trembling body into his arms. His face buried in her hair, she half heard his sobs of relief as he realised how close she had come to being buried alive. ’Thank God, my darling, Ram Das was in time.’

She heard Isabel’s voice, ‘I put out my hand to stop her, Gavin, but she was already falling into the chasm.’

Helen realised that Isabel was endeavouring to conceal her malicious intent in case she had been observed, but Gavin did not seem to be aware of anything untoward. Everything had happened so quickly and he had been some distance away.

‘How are the horses; Sultana must have been so afraid?’ asked Helen, remembering that she was rushing to the stables before the second tremor.

‘She will be fine, the syce is with them and he is expert at calming nervous animals, so don’t worry, sweetheart,’ said Gavin softly, gathering Helen even closer into his arms. She closed her eyes, relinquishing herself to his strength, reluctant to move from their safety. But there was no escape, as she became aware of the noise and cries of terror in the distance and she knew that people were dying in the city and villages and as their doctor, she must help them.

Gently pushing Gavin aside, she stood up and asked for her medical bag.

‘I must help those people, Gavin. Stay here with Rosita and the others. Ram Das, my medical bag is on the hall table. Please fetch it for me.’

Gavin looked at his wife with pride. Despite her ordeal, she would not shirk her duty to others.

‘I will accompany you, Helen. There must be something I can do to help. Ram Das, stay here and look after Mrs. Llewellyn. The worst is over now and God willing there will be no more aftershocks, but stay downstairs until we are back.’

Helen and Gavin picked their way on foot carefully over fallen trees and rubble and noticed that the palace seemed intact, although part of the causeway had disappeared under the waters of the lake. Most of the buildings in the European quarter were unscathed, except for broken chimneys and splintered window panes, but terrible cries of human suffering were coming from the native quarter and the villages outside the city.

Boats carrying the Nawab’s Rohillas were just tying up to the jetty and, for once, British soldiers had been permitted into the City to help in the humanitarian search for life under the tons of wood and rubble that had once been shops and houses.

Gavin organised the wounded to be taken to Helen’s clinic and the dead were laid out in rows in the grounds of the mosque for identification and burial or cremation, depending on their religion. ‘If that can be ascertained in all this turmoil’, he said.

As long as she lived, Helen would never forget the tragedy, signs of which were evident as she picked her way through the devastation to the clinic which, fortunately, still stood intact. She saw a mother holding her dead child, refusing to accept its death; a father digging with his bare hands to find his wife and family under the rubble of his hut; lost children wandering about dazed, looking for parents whom death had claimed. Here was a dead cow, already bloated in the heat, there a human arm sticking up from a chasm which had buried the rest of the owner, reminding Helen all too cruelly of her own narrow escape.

She and the other doctors worked late into the night, sewing gaping wounds, amputating limbs, setting broken bodies. Gavin came to her occasionally and gave her milky nourishment to keep up her strength. Never had he loved this woman more than now when she was dirty and bloody, dark circles under her beautiful eyes, working tirelessly to save these people she had come to love. Helen looked up and caught his eye. Why was he looking at her like that and what did that expression in his eyes mean? she wondered. He smiled, that special smile of his which always caused her heart to flutter, but she had no time to indulge her emotions. because one more patient was being placed on the operating table for her attention.

On one occasion, Gavin brought her an assistant, the beautiful Comtesse de Colbert. Blanche wore an apron over her pretty muslin dress that was soon blood-stained, but the lovely Creole did not flinch from carrying buckets of soiled dressings to the makeshift incinerator, or endeavouring to make Helen’s patients comfortable after their surgery. She sponged the dirt from the wounds the doctors were treating and knelt down beside the dying to give them comfort.

The tall, blond Scot, John MacGregor, rolled up his sleeves and used his great strength to carry the wounded into the clinic, or transferred patients after their surgery onto straw mattresses which were laid out on every available space of floor in the little hospital.

It was the early hours of the next morning when the last patient was brought to the doctors - a small boy rescued by British soldiers from an air pocket deep beneath the rubble of his home. He was traumatised, but still breathing and had suffered a cracked collar bone, which Helen knew would heal naturally. They nicknamed the little orphan ‘Lazarus’, because of his remarkable rise from the dead. Not far from where he lay, the soldiers told Helen, they had found the crushed bodies of his family.

There were so many homeless people and orphaned children. Gavin had organised makeshift camps on the outskirts of the city for the families and the Army had set up soup kitchens serving milk, dhal and chappatis. The Nawab had promised to rebuild his people’s homes as soon as possible and Blanche was organising places in the Catholic Mission for the little orphans.

Little Lazarus was more fortunate. The syce’s wife, a pretty doe-eyed woman of about twenty-five called Lalitha, who could not bear children, herself, pleaded with Helen to be allowed to adopt the little fellow.

‘Well as long as no other relative comes forward to claim him, Lalitha, I see no reason why you cannot take him home,’ replied Helen to the Indian woman whose eyes lit up with joy as she scooped little Lazarus into her arms.

It was very late that night when she and Gavin returned to the Residency. A hot bath and some food were all Helen could manage before she climbed into her large bed and fell asleep immediately, with Rosita by her side enveloping her in motherly arms, as she had done so often when Helen was a child.

The next day the storm broke, bringing welcome relief from the sultry heat, but causing more problems for the teams clearing the earthquake debris. More rain fell in a few hours than had fallen since the start of the monsoon season and the river was becoming dangerously high, another threat to the lives of these unfortunate people.

Amidst protests from the villagers, who were reluctant to move again, the British soldiers dismantled the tents and moved them to higher ground. Helen at the clinic was at last visited by the Royal Princes, whose presence in the aftermath of the earthquake had been prominent by their absence.

‘We are grateful for your efforts on behalf of our people, Lady French. In fact, His Royal Highness, the Nawab, wishes to express his gratitude to all the British community for their heroic efforts,’ said Prince Hassan, rather pompously.

Helen, remembering his grandmother, the Dowager Begum’s criticism of the British, wondered if she, too, would be grateful to the despised Angressi.

Chapter 15

Life, after the terrible disaster of the earthquake, was returning to normal. The people had started to rebuild their homes and shops, financed to a large extent by the Nawab. Even most of the damage to the Residency, which was quite slight in comparison to other parts of the city, had been repaired and her beloved horses now, thankfully, quite recovered from their ordeal, had been rehoused in newly-built stables.

Helen made several trips to the homes of victims of the earthquake on whom she had operated, and was touched and surprised how, even the limbless with true Indian fatalism, were learning to adapt.

Two months had elapsed since Helen missed her first menstrual cycle and she was now certain that she was pregnant. Suddenly, she recalled the look in Isabel de Silva’s eyes during the earthquake and the unexplained poisoning of Rosita and she was determined, for the sake of her unborn child, to remove the woman from the Residency. She decided to tell Gavin about her pregnancy and at the same time to speak to him about sending Isabel de Silva away. A generous annuity could be arranged for her, so that she would not be destitute, but both Helen and Rosita would feel safer if the woman was not around.

Gavin had moved his office to the guest house, whilst the wood panelling in his study (which had been damaged by the earthquake) was repaired. His response, ‘Come in,’ to the knock on the door was followed by a surprised, ‘Helen!’ as his lovely wife entered the room.

Helen was wearing an apple green, muslin dress, similar to the one she had worn on that first day he had seen her in Mirapore, which seemed so long ago now. Her auburn hair had been lifted off her neck in burnished copper ringlets and tied with a green velvet ribbon which matched her large, long-lashed, emerald eyes and her creamy skin was now faintly tinted with gold from the Indian sun. Her beauty was as breathtaking as ever, and Gavin despite his intentions to fight her attractions, because of her continued rejection of him, found himself rising from his chair and moving towards her.

‘To what do I owe this unexpected visit from my wife? I have hardly seen you lately,’ he smiled and took her hands in his, his eyes narrowing quizzically.

‘I need to talk to you about something, Gavin, something which may or may not please you.’

‘How intriguing,’ quipped her devastatingly, handsome husband, as he led her to a comfortable leather sofa.

Helen sat nervously on the edge of the sofa, whilst her husband leaned his tall frame against the mantelpiece, a cigar clutched between his teeth, his bearing that of a man completely at ease with himself whilst Helen, herself, felt her own nerves stretched to breaking point.

‘Well, Helen, what is this piece of news you are not sure I will like?’ Gavin’s dark eyes watched her with an expression she could not decipher.

‘I am pregnant,’ she blurted out and Gavin throwing his cigar into the fireplace was soon kneeling at her feet, clasping her in his arms, the joy in his face unmistakable as he cried out, ‘My God, sweetheart, how could you believe I would not be pleased! How long?’ he questioned, his brown eyes dancing with golden lights, as he looked adoringly at the prospective mother of his child.

‘I believe I am two months’ pregnant, so if I go full term, the baby should be born in February. But I have something else to discuss, Gavin,’ said Helen, wishing to bring her overjoyed husband back to reality, because he was now sitting by her side on the settee, his arms drawing her into their circle, pressing her back against his strong chest as his lips caressed her soft neck and his hands moved down to the swell of her breasts.

‘H'mm, what else do I need to know, my little sweetheart?’ murmured Gavin huskily, as one hand cupped her full breast and the other moved across the slight curve of her belly.

‘I do believe your lovely breasts are a little fuller, my darling.’ Gavin teased, ‘but I need to examine you more closely,’ and twisting her around, he pushed her gently down on the settee, his mouth silencing her protests, his hands sliding her dress off her shoulders. Helen saw her husband’s dark eyes linger for a moment on her naked breasts before he bent down to take each rosy nipple into his mouth. She felt again that surge of weakness, that irresistible need for him and it took her all her strength to push him away and to jump up from the settee. She walked to the window, adjusting her dress, determined to put some distance between herself and her husband in order to steady her own raw emotions.

Gavin, too, rose and came towards her, reluctant to let her go, and when he would have taken her in his arms again, she said, imploringly, ‘Please Gavin, let me speak.’

She felt him tense and move away.

‘Are you not pleased to be carrying my child, Helen? Is that what you want to say?’

‘Oh, Gavin, of course not. What I want is for you to get rid of Isabel de Silva,’ Helen said, more abruptly than she had intended.

Gavin started and leaning towards Helen, as if he had not quite heard her words, asked, ‘Isabel? Why? Is there something wrong with her work. I have always found her to be most efficient and loyal.’

‘Oh, it is not her work; I can’t fault her there and as for her loyalty, perhaps that is reserved solely for you, but certainly not for me, I am afraid. In fact, I suspect she is involved in some unholy cult and may have had something to do with Rosita’s illness. Only a few days before Rosita took ill, Isabel had been extremely vociferous in her condemnation of Rosita inviting a Catholic priest to exorcise the tomb and ...’

‘I know about that,’ Gavin interrupted. ‘Isabel told me and she also expressed deep remorse at upsetting you and Rosita about the matter. It seems she was afraid the Nawab’s family would object to the desecration of the tomb by an infidel rite and the matter would be an embarrassment to me as Resident here.’

‘Indeed, so once again our loyal Isabel had to report to you about my actions,’ said Helen, not bothering to cloak the sarcasm in her voice and remembering that it had been Isabel’s tittle tattle, which had given Gavin cause to be jealous of John MacGregor. ‘And did you agree with her, Gavin?’

‘I dismissed her fears as unnecessary. The Residency is British ground and the Nawab cannot interfere with what is done here. Personally, I did think that Rosita’s anxieties over something sinister in the tomb were a bit illogical, but she is Spanish and very superstitious and if it gives her piece of mind for a priest to bless the place, I can see no harm in it. But why do you want to dismiss Isabel from our employ? There is really no proof that she was involved in the poison Rosita ingested. You have not given me a good enough reason yet, Helen.’

Gone was the softness in Gavin’s face. His expression was now serious, the face of the British Resident intervening between two protagonists and wanting to learn all the facts before he made a judgment.

Helen was furious, her face drained of all colour as she glared at her husband, her lips curling in contempt when she replied, ‘I wonder why you are so defensive of Isabel de Silva. I can see you can believe no ill of her. Perhaps you should examine your own feelings for the woman, Gavin French, and when you have made up your mind, let me know.’

With these cutting words, Helen moved towards the door, but Gavin caught her arm and pulled her around to face him, his face contorted with anger.

‘What the hell do you mean, Helen? What are you implying?’

‘That she is your mistress and has been, perhaps, even when poor Maria was alive,’ Helen heard herself retaliate angrily.

Gavin’s hands bit into her shoulders as he glared at his wife, his eyes flashing with anger, ’How dare you make such a scandalous suggestion. The woman was devoted to Maria and it was Maria’s last wish that I should give her employment, as long as I was in India and find her a suitable position when I left. Isabel de Silva has always been loyal to both Maria and myself and I can only think that it is your present condition that is making you so uncharacteristically unfair, Helen.’

‘My condition, I would remind you, my devoted husband, is a result of lust, not love,’ sneered Helen, watching Gavin flinch as, with these words she viciously reminded her husband of his brutal lovemaking in Kashmir. ‘Don’t worry, I will bear your child, Sir Gavin French, but you will never be welcome in my bed again,’ and Helen tore herself from her husband’s hands and stormed out of the guest house, not noticing the figure in a sari crouching in the shrubbery beneath the open window, listening to every word she and Gavin had exchanged.

She did not see Gavin again that day. He took his meals in the guest house on a tray and, for all she knew, even spent the night there because she did not hear him moving about in the adjoining bedroom.

Once again, they were like strangers, passing each other occasionally with only a brief nod of acknowledgement. As far as she was concerned, Helen felt that Gavin’s refusal to believe her about Isabel de Silva’s machinations, was proof of his feelings for the woman, despite his anger at her accusation.

Then Isabel vanished without any explanation and Gavin glared at Helen over the dining table when the housekeeper’s disappearance was reported by a servant. Apparently she had taken all her possessions and her room was empty.

‘Do you know anything about this, Helen?’ Gavin asked curtly.

‘You mean, have I dismissed her without your consent? Of course, not. But I am sure she will return to you. Where else can she go?’ replied Helen with biting sarcasm.

Isabel de Silva did not return and Helen felt it was all her fault and although he did not say so, it was evident that Gavin believed she was responsible.

When Rosita asked her if there was anything amiss, Helen only shook her head and smiled sadly, but the Spanish woman was too astute to miss the signs of heartbreak in her beloved child. She watched her pushing her food around her plate without any appetite, the dark circles under her lovely eyes, which became deeper by the day and the brave, little smile she forced her lips to make whenever she saw Rosita studying her. Rage, that her sweet child who was carrying his child, should be treated in so cavalier a manner by her husband, forced Rosita to interfere against her better judgment.

On the third day of what was now obviously a deep estrangement between husband and wife, Rosita waited for Helen to leave for the clinic and then stormed into the guest house to confront Gavin.

‘Hello, Rosita, what is the matter, you look so upset?’ he said, as she came into the room, barely waiting for his permission to enter.

‘Yes, I am upset and disappointed in you, Gavin. Why are you so cold towards my precious Helen? Do you not know she is carrying your child and should be loved and protected? What could be so terrible that you have turned your back on her?’

‘Please sit down, Rosita,’ said Gavin gently, guiding the distraught Spanish woman to the settee. ‘I hate to see you so upset. Yes, I know about Helen’s pregnancy, but it seems she is not too happy about her condition and is prepared to invent some cock-and-bull story about Isabel de Silva to justify her unhappiness. Did she tell you that she believes the poor woman

is trying to harm you and is involved in some devil worship? She even accuses me of adulterous relations with our housekeeper,’ explained Gavin, the bitterness in his voice barely concealed.

Rosita sat in shocked silence as she heard Gavin’s words and then she said quietly, ‘She is right about Isabel de Silva’s involvement in some black art. I, too, have witnessed something demonic, an evil influence that changed the woman from her mild, quiet personality into a black, reptilian demon. Let me explain, Gavin, because I can see you find this hard to believe.’

Gavin listened in astonishment as Rosita came to the end of her description of her own and Helen’s experiences and he thought of what he had read when he first came to India, about the demonic possession of some members of a Cult which worshipped a certain goddess and chose the Left Hand Path to avoid their karma. What the hell was the goddess’s name? Then he remembered - ‘KALI’!

‘Oh my God, Rosita, if this is true then my family’s history, my ancestor’s strange Will would make sense,’ muttered Gavin, his practical mind still refusing to accept the malevolent influence of an eighteenth century curse on his family.

‘Apart from trying to poison me, which we cannot prove conclusively, did Helen tell you about the snake which menaced her in the tomb, a snake which had, obviously, been introduced there deliberately? Also there was the incident that occurred during the earthquake. Helen felt sure that Isabel’s hand was at her back pushing her into the abyss which had opened suddenly at her feet and if it was not for Ram Das’s prompt action, she would have been buried alive,’ said Rosita, as she saw Gavin blanch under his tanned skin, his eyes widen in astonishment and then flash with rage.

He stood up and strode towards the window, his hands clenching spasmodically behind his back as if he was struggling to control a strong emotion. At last he turned to face Rosita.

‘No, Rosita, Helen did not mention these threats to her life; she just told me that she wanted me to dismiss Isabel de Silva and when I asked for her reasons, she accused me of … well adulterous relations with the woman, which angered me. Rosita, you must know how much I love Helen but I am unable to break down this hideous barrier between us. Sometimes I believe she is sorry she married me.’

Gavin slumped into the settee near Rosita and buried his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his thighs, his body bowed as if the burden of his love was weighing him down and Rosita put a soothing hand on his dark hair as sobs shook his tall frame.

‘Only you can break down this barrier, Gavin. Go to her when she returns from the clinic and convince her of your love for her. If she believes (and, incidentally, she has never mentioned her suspicions to me) that Isabel de Silva is your mistress, then only you can make her see that this is false,’ advised Rosita, her heart aching for this man and her beloved child, Helen, whose powerful love for each other was destroying them, as she had foreseen.

Helen had already returned from the clinic, they were told by the gardener, when they went to find her in the stables. In fact the memsahib had saddled her horse and gone out somewhere, ordering the syce to accompany her on one of the pack horses.

‘Gone riding!’ exclaimed Gavin and then turning to Rosita with barely concealed anger in his voice said, ‘You see, as a doctor, Helen is well aware of the dangers of horse riding in her condition, but she is prepared to risk her own and our child’s life just to spite me. Are those the actions of a loving wife, who is happy to be carrying her husband’s child?’

Rosita saw the pain in Gavin’s eyes and for the first time she felt that the trouble between these two was as much, if not more, Helen’s fault. The girl had always been independent and at times headstrong, traits that her beloved father and Rosita, herself, had never discouraged, but now she was married, why could she not accept her husband’s right to be master in his own house.

Helen returned after several hours and Rosita heard her ordering one of the servants to bring a light supper to her bedroom, because she intended to retire early.

Rosita was about to follow Helen when she heard Gavin’s study door open and saw him stride up the stairs. She would not interfere. It was time for her headstrong child to face her angry husband and Rosita trembled for her beloved.

Helen had removed her divided skirt and sat down to remove her riding boots. She was just undoing the buttons of her silk blouse, when Gavin burst into her bedroom. She saw at once the angry flush on his face, the steel cold expression in his dark eyes.

‘Don’t you ever knock, Gavin?’ asked Helen, recalling another occasion her husband had come into her bedroom uninvited.

Ignoring her remark, Gavin came towards his wife, his hands lifting her to her feet, his fingers clamped hard on her shoulders. ‘So you decided to try abortion by horse-riding, did you Dr. Helen!’ Gavin accused, his lips twisted contemptuously, conveying in those few words his belief that she knew exactly what she was risking. ‘So much for your promise to bear my child.’

‘Don’t be absurd. I rode carefully and the syce accompanied me.’

‘What was wrong with taking the carriage to wherever you felt compelled to go?’

‘Where I was going, there is no track for carriages,’ and realising that this explanation was not enough to satisfy her irate husband, Helen went on to explain. ‘I went to the temple of Kali behind the waterfall in the forest, because I hoped Isabel’s brother would be there.’

‘Isabel’s brother, Vincent de Silva? I did not know you knew him and what …’

Gavin was not given a chance to finish his sentence. Helen pulled herself away from his restricting hands and walked wearily to the window. She was suddenly very tired and wanted an end to this conversation as soon as possible.

‘I met him once long ago when I was visiting another temple and he tried to coerce me into following him to the temple of Kali. But that is a long story and I am too tired to indulge your curiosity any further, Gavin. I hoped he would know where Isabel was and I would have asked her to return to the Residency, for your sake. But he was not there.’

Helen’s back was turned to her husband and he could not see the tears sparkling in her eyes

‘Bring her back, for my sake? Bloody hell, Helen, you wanted to get rid of her and now you risk your own and our child’s life on this stupid whim. Look at me, woman,’ Gavin demanded almost arrogantly.

Helen turned and Gavin’s heart softened when he saw the tears in her eyes and her brave attempts to fight them. She looked so tired, yet incredibly lovely, standing there framed in the window and he could not fight his impulse to take her into his arms.

‘Helen, Helen,’ he whispered into her hair, his arms holding her gently. ‘I want you to take things easy now, if not for my sake, then the sake of our child. Isabel has decided to leave and there is no need to scour the country looking for her. I will make some enquiries and make sure she is not financially embarrassed. Now you must rest because I can see you are very tired.’

Kissing Helen lightly on her lips, Gavin left the room and Helen, unable to control the bleakness in her heart, lay down on the bed and sobbed quietly into her pillow. That Gavin would find Isabel, she was sure, and now that his wife suspected their relationship, he would install his mistress in a secret location where he could visit her clandestinely.

Before she closed her eyes, Helen recalled her abortive visit to the temple. The syce was reluctant to accompany her at first and when they approached the entrance to the temple, a cave behind the waterfall, he was trembling with fear.

‘You stay here, syce, with the horses. I will see if de Silva Memsahib’s brother is inside.’

‘No, memsahib’’, the frightened man whispered as Helen dismounted and shook his head from side to side accompanied by a similar movement of his hand, (a strange gesture which Helen had observed was used exclusively by Indians when they tried to express some emotion). ‘Please don’t go in there. I have heard…’ What he had heard, Helen did not stop to find out.

Helen picked her way carefully behind the waterfall, along a narrow ledge slippery from the spray, which led to the opening of the cave. It was dark and dank inside and it took some time for her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness and then she shook with fear. At the end of the cave was an enormous, black figure mounted on a dais, its blackness glistening in the lights of the clay lamps at its feet, as if it had been smothered in grease. A hag with fangs and a protruding tongue, red as if she had supped on blood, naked except for her ornaments of skulls and severed hands, was staring at Helen, with bulging eyes. The giant figure had four arms which seemed to sway from her black body, one was holding a pickaxe, the other a noose. One leg was raised in the motion of a temple dancer, poised as if it would stamp down to the clash of tablas and cymbals to perform the Bharata Natyam. Was it her imagination, or did the figure move and Helen heard the clink of anklets worn by Indian nautch girls and she could have sworn two hands of the Goddess started to move in the traditional gestures. With a thrill of fear and fascination, she approached the idol.

It was suddenly very cold in the cave, yet Helen was sweating. She reached into her jacket pocket for a handkerchief and her fingers closed on the holy beads given to her by the old Sunyassi. She lifted them out and, unaccountably, raised them to her lips. Almost immediately the Goddess was nothing more than a stone idol, black and ugly, but only a pagan statue, garlanded with her terrible ornaments.

Helen left the cave quickly, not understanding what she thought she had seen, and returned to the very relieved syce and the horses, but the experience seemed to have drained her and she fell into a heavy sleep in which she dreamed Isabel de Silva was dressed in the costume of a temple dancing girl, anklets and glass bangles clinking as she swayed seductively in front of Gavin, whose hands were reaching out to pull the sari from the dancer’s naked body.

Chapter 16

As if to assuage her unhappiness, Helen plunged once more into her work at the clinic and, accompanied by Doctor Patel, visited the villages that were now rebuilt in the valley beyond the city. Most of them consisted of mud huts with thatched roofs but a group of them were situated well away from the others, with their own water supply.

‘I am afraid, Doctor French, even in this mainly Muslim state, the Hindus observe their caste system. The houses you see across the river belong to the ‘Untouchables’, who by circumstances of their birth, must always be casteless.’

‘Yes, said Helen, ‘I am always surprised by this aspect of Hinduism. In the West, we have class distinction, but a man can lift himself by education and wealth, even buying vast estates and titles as our eighteenth century Nabobs demonstrated.’

Helen followed Dr. Patel through the villages and remembered that he was not a Hindu but a Parsi, one of the oldest religions in the world. His people, the Arab physician Mahmoud bin Said had told her, came to India in AD 632 and because they had never proselytised, had no religious conflict with any of the other Indian religions. Helen knew that the Parsis with their fair skins and Western ways were popular with the British, who admired them for their business acumen and philanthropic culture.

People of another nationality were now leaving Mirapore. The Spanish Consulate was being closed and Don Hernandez and his family had been recalled to Madrid.

‘You British have left us very little leeway on this sub-continent, so we must concentrate on our South American colonies,’ he laughingly told Gavin.

A farewell dinner was to be held in the Consulate and the invitation included the British Resident, Sir Gavin, Lady French and Senora Llewellyn. Helen knew that Rosita would be sad to see her fellow countrymen leave. After all her years in England, she had been pleased to speak Spanish again and spend time in the Spanish ambience of the Consulate on her weekly visits to Senora Hernandez who was, herself, a Southern Spaniard from the same region as Rosita.

Rosita had been busy making the dresses for the dinner. She had found some beautiful midnight blue velvet for Helen, which she made up in subtle drapes to disguise her swelling stomach and a low cut bodice to accentuate her magnificent bosom. Rosita’s own dress was plainer, in black taffeta, but beautifully cut to minimise her bountiful figure.

Gavin could not take his eyes off his wife that evening. It seemed he was not alone, for every man in the room admired (and Gavin had no doubt lusted after) the beautiful Lady French. The colour of the midnight blue velvet was a perfect foil for her magnolia cream complexion and auburn hair, which Rosita had dressed in a heavy chignon low on the nape of her neck decorated by a small garland of creamy jasmine flowers around the coiled hair. Perhaps it was her approaching motherhood, but Helen had a bloom, the subtle feminine appeal of the everlasting Eve, which was hard for any man to resist. Gavin watched her as she smiled and mildly flirted with her admirers, her graceful posture giving no hint of her condition.

Her dinner companion was John MacGregor and Gavin felt a stab of jealousy each time his wife smiled at the handsome Scot, who had never been able to hide his admiration and fascination for Helen.

Helen saw Gavin’s eyes on her and John MacGregor and wilfully turned all her charm on the hapless Scot. She leaned towards him and Gavin was well aware that the soft curves of her bosom and the scent of the perfume she dabbed between her cleavage, would be intoxicating to the Scot. Gavin saw him blanch and whisper something in Helen’s ear, which obviously delighted her as she laughed and had the grace to blush.

After a sumptuous dinner, many speeches and a tearful farewell to their Spanish friends, the guests departed.

Helen allowed Rosita to unfasten her dress but when her Spanish friend unpinned her hair and took up the hairbrush, she said, ‘Not to-night Rosita; you, too, must get your beauty sleep. Goodnight, querida,’ and with a kiss on her cheek, a hug and an insistent hand on her elbow, Helen escorted Rosita to her bedroom door.

Helen was now alone and with a sigh, she undressed and stood naked before her cheval mirror studying the slight swell of her belly and the fullness of her breasts. She looked down, her hand stroking her abdomen and whispered, ‘Goodnight, my little one.’

She smiled at the stirrings of her motherly emotions but when she looked up again at her reflection in the mirror, she gasped, because Gavin was standing behind her. He was watching her, remembering how every man and particularly the Scot, had lusted after her that evening and his eyes flashed with anger. Helen turned and reached for her wrap, but Gavin took it from her hand and turning her around to face the mirror again, said with a cynical twist to his lips, ‘Why cover yourself from your husband, madam, when you have permitted every man, and particularly your Scottish friend, to peer down your bodice this evening. Why pretend to be so modest now?’

Before Helen had time to protest, Gavin swung her around to face him and fastened his lips hard on her mouth. Then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed, kneeling over her, glaring at her, his insane jealousy provoking him to prove that he was her master.

Gavin’s lovemaking was savage, more domination than love, his mouth bruised Helen’s lips and his hands were rough on her body. At last he took her with clenched teeth and a reckless frenzy, more to satisfy his own hunger than to pleasure her. When at last he was satiated, he collapsed heavily on her, his heart pounding against her breast, his hair damp with sweat.

Unaccountably, Helen’s anger melted away and she felt a strange tenderness for this man who had set out to dominate her with his arrogant masculinity, but now lay weak and helpless on her breast. She knew that it was her own deliberate flirtation with John MacGregor that had driven Gavin to make love to her so savagely. She lifted her hand to stroke his damp curls and at her touch, he looked up, astonished to see the look of tenderness in her green eyes, which had flashed anger at him only a short while ago.

‘My God, Helen, you made me forget myself again. I am sorry if I was rough, but you drive me to distraction. Why must it always be like this between us?’

Then, as if to compensate for his roughness, Gavin took her in his arms once again, kissing and caressing her slowly and deliberately. He lay her back on the pillow and wound her long hair around his own neck.

‘You are so beautiful, my darling, but you must remember you belong to me and me alone,’ he murmured, pressing kisses on her eyes, on the little hollow at the base of her throat where a pulse was beating rapidly. One of his hands cupped one breast, whilst his tongue licked and teased the taut nipple of the other. Gavin’s hands were lover’s hands, tender and reverent, sliding over her body, stroking her belly and the mound of damp, dark auburn curls beneath and then his sensitive fingers invaded her intimately until she was aflame with her need for him and she cried out, ‘Gavin, oh Gavin, please!’

‘Please what, my love, make you mine again? That is just what I propose to do,’ whispered Gavin huskily, his own body now hard with desire as he looked with wonder into the emerald depths of his wife’s beautiful eyes. Helen held her arms out to him, her legs opening seductively to receive him and when he entered her, she wrapped her limbs about him, her body arching convulsively as waves of rapture overcame them both and they cried out, simultaneously, as they reached that exquisite pinnacle of love.

That night for the first time in their married lives, Helen slept in her husband’s arms. He drew her back towards him until her soft curves fitted perfectly into the angles of his hard body, as if they were two parts of one whole and she drifted into sleep, feeling one of his hands cup her breast and the other caress her stomach and heard him whisper, ‘Sleep, my little sweetheart, my love, my darling wife, the beautiful mother of my unborn child.’

The next morning when she awoke, Helen was alone again and she remembered that Gavin had to leave early to accompany Prince Hassan to the outlying borders of the mountain State. The earthquake had caused landslides in the hills and some of the villages had been crushed. Help had been sent, but it was important that the people saw, for themselves, their Ruler’s concern for their welfare.

Helen found a note on her dressing table propped against a crystal bud vase containing a single red rose and she smiled tenderly as she read Gavin’s words, ‘Take care of yourself, little sweetheart, until I am back and I promise to take up where we left off last night.’

Your besotted husband!’

Helen smiled, seeing in her mind’s eye, Gavin’s dark, twinkling eyes and his audacious smile. Last night he had been at first a jealous and savage lover and then he had driven her to untold heights of rapture with his tender but passionate lovemaking. She had always loved Gavin French, first with a childlike adoration and now with a woman’s sensual intensity. She looked down and cupped her belly with both hands, a madonna-like smile playing about her lips, still swollen from his kisses, as she remembered every delightful moment of the night she had just spent in the arms of the father of this child.

The warm days of the Himalayan summer continued and Helen, who had promised Gavin that she would not attempt to ride Sultana, nevertheless, visited the paddock daily to greet her equine friend. The little grey never failed to whicker with delight when she saw her mistress approaching and even if she was at the far end of the field with the other horses, Sultana would gallop up to the fence to greet Helen. She knew that there was always an apple or crushed carrot treat in her friend’s pockets but even when these were offered and eaten, the little mare was reluctant to leave her mistress, nuzzling her and blowing her sweet breath into Helen’s hair.

Often Sultan trotted up for his share of the treats and fussing, but he didn’t hang around after he was sure there was nothing more on offer. Helen laughed as he cantered off, ‘What an example of cupboard love, Sultana. Your friend is not interested, now that I have nothing more to offer him.’

Helen’s visits to the clinic were restricted to a few hours each day. Doctor Patel and the nursing staff had everything well in hand. She was still, however, asked to attend the harem women. She hated visiting the seraglio because it had too many memories of the lovely and tragic Princess Muna. The Dowager Begum was now totally blind and suffered from high blood pressure, but despite Helen’s advice, she continued to eat large quantities of fatty food and smoke her hookah. She seemed to have obliterated her great granddaughter from her memory and had her apartments sealed.

One of the harem women told Helen, ‘Nothing has been removed from Muna’s apartments. They are exactly as they were when she was alive, but no one can enter now, because the doors are sealed. Some of the women have heard soft weeping behind the high walls surrounding her courtyard garden and the lilt of the sitar which Princess Muna loved to play. I believe, Memsahib, her spirit cannot rest or enter the cycle of rebirth. I am a Buddhist and I pray to the Lord Buddha each night to help her attain Nirvana.’

Helen felt a deep sadness, as the Residency phaeton left the gates of the Palace.

As she recalled her conversation with the harem lady, she reflected on the fascination of India, its climate, its history, its ancient traditions and wondered, not for the first time, how the British had been able to gain control over such a vast and ancient country. The religions alone were divisive:Hindus believing in Karma and Dharma and adhering to their unchangeable caste system; the Muslims’ belief in their own spirituality which often lead to

fanaticism, their religion, nevertheless, having a great deal in common with Christianity. Then there was the Buddhist, like the harem lady, who believed in the ‘Middle Way’, a path halfway between austerity and the indulgence of materialism. Helen had, of course, met the proud warrior Sikhs with their uncut hair covered by turbans, who had been taught by their founder, Guru Nanak, that God was the same no matter in which religion He was worshipped.

There had been many invaders of India but none like the British with their segregated clubs, judicial and administrative institutions, their vast army, most of which was Indian, controlled by British officers and their innate sense of superiority, born of a culture as alien to the Indian as theirs was to the British? Even here in Mirapore, the bungalows dotted about the hills belonging to the British had names like “Rose Cottage”, “Beech Croft”, and “The Oaks”, as if these people from that little island off Europe were determined to leave their imprint even on their Himalayan retreats.

Helen had heard that Indian voices amongst the educated classes were now being raised against this dominance by the foreign, western John Company but here in Mirapore, she had felt no hostility from the village people as she tended to them in the clinic or in their mud huts in the villages. It never failed to surprise her how even the poorest villager would offer her a cup of tea or some sweetmeat and when she restored a sick child to health, a little present of silk or handcrafted earthenware would be laid at her feet with gratitude and respect.

That afternoon Helen was to take tea with her friend, the Comtesse de Colbert, at the French Consulate, which reminded her that the French were another European power that had endeavoured to control India through their own Compagnie des Indes Orientales. Their rivalry with the British was more fierce and bitter than with the Dutch and Portuguese, because their respective countries’ hostilities in Europe lasted some seventy years, but thanks to the leadership and personality of men like Clive, Hastings, Roe, Charnock, Stringer, Lawrence, The East India Company became the dominant European Power on this vast Sub-Continent.

That was all in the past and now she was to take tea with her dear friend, the Comtesse de Colbert Blanche, looking as elegant as ever, was standing at the ornate door of the French Consulate as the Residency phaeton drew up. She greeted Helen with a hug and taking her hand, led her into the beautiful blue and gold drawing room, which was her own private salon.

‘Helen, you look ravishing. Being enceinte suits you, my sweet,’ said the irrepressible Comtesse and seeing Helen’s look of surprise explained, ‘Your husband told me on the night of Don Hernandez’s farewell dinner party, because I remarked that you were even more beautiful than the first day we met. You know, my dear, your husband, like all Englishman, is good at hiding his emotions under that cool, debonair exterior, but now he is like a little boy, bursting to tell everyone that his beautiful wife is carrying his child.’

The lovely Comtesse was pouring the tea into delicate Sèvres china cups when she remarked suddenly, ‘I do envy you; I would have loved children but, unfortunately, I cannot conceive.’

‘May I, in my medical capacity, ask if you have consulted a specialist?

Sometimes a simple operation, or knowledge of the right conditions for conception, will overcome sterility in a woman, but both you and your husband should seek advice.’

‘No, it is my fault, Helen. My husband was a widower when we married and had already fathered two children. He knew, of course, that I could never bear him children, but being the kind and loving man he is, this made no difference to his wish to marry me,’ said Blanche.

‘Then let me write to a colleague of mine in England who is in touch with an eminent gynaecologist. You are still too young to give up the chance of having children,’ begged Helen, taking her friend’s hand.

‘I see, Dr. Helen French, I shall have to tell you all about my wicked past to convince you that no specialist, no matter how eminent, can help me.

‘When I was a young girl, no more than sixteen years old, I fell in love with a dashing French officer. He was darkly handsome, like your Gavin, with the same charisma that made every woman shiver with delight when he walked into a room, whether she was fifteen or seventy-five, but it was me, Blanche Jaurès, who won his heart. He asked my parents for my hand in marriage and they would have consented, but my father discovered that François was part Huron, North American Indian from his mother’s side and like all colonials, my father refused to dilute our French blood by marriage to François. François asked me to wait for him. He would return to Canada and make his fortune and when I was eighteen, we would be married, whether my father consented or not.

‘Before he sailed for Canada, we made love and since then no man has ever been able to match my part American-Indian lover,’ whispered the lovely Comtesse, with tears in her eyes.

‘He did not return; his ship was hit by an iceberg just off Newfoundland: there were no survivors. I discovered soon after that I was carrying his child. I kept the secret too long until I was unable to hide my condition from my parents. They were horrified, because no man would want to marry me now and I had to agree to a secret abortion. The surgeon tore my François’s baby from my womb and made it impossible for me ever to bear children again.’

Blanche came to the end of her tragic story and Helen clasped the beautiful woman in her arms, her own heart breaking for the lovely Creole.

‘You will keep my secret. I would not like to embarrass the Comte’, pleaded Blanche de Colbert.

‘You have no need to fear any indiscretion on my part. What you have told me is covered by the ethics of the Hippocratic Oath which decrees that patient/doctor confidence should be strictly observed - an ethic which is as sacred as the Roman Catholic Confessional,’ replied Helen.

‘Now that I have opened my heart to you,’ said a smiling Blanche, taking Helen’s arm. ‘I hope you will not take it amiss if I give you a little word of warning. Do not try to make your husband jealous. No don’t protest! Is that not what you were doing at the Spanish Dinner with that adorable Scotsman, John MacGregor? I could see how you flirted with the poor, besotted man and how your husband’s hands were clenched on his knees, in fury. You know I was his dinner companion and was near enough to observe his suppressed anger.’

Helen could not deny her behaviour and admitted, ‘I know it was very wrong of me and unfair to John, but Gavin had made me angry earlier. Believe me, he left me in no doubt of his displeasure when we returned to the Residency that night,’ confessed Helen, and her blushes left Blanche in no doubt how the lesson had been taught.

Chapter 17

The day of Gavin’s return came at last and it was arranged by Lady Agnes Cameron that Helen should lunch at the fort and return with her husband, who would call there as customary, on his return from the Northern territories of Mirapore.

Helen dressed carefully in a cool amber silk dress, with a bonnet to match, trimmed with ruched amber silk around the brim under which her lovely auburn ringlets bounced playfully. She skipped down the stairs to the waiting phaeton and when she looked up with those long-lashed, emerald eyes to wave to Rosita standing on the verandah, the Spanish woman thought, as Blanche de Colbert had before her, that pregnancy suited her darling child. Never had she seen her looking so lovely and so happy.

Perhaps she had reconciled her differences with Gavin. Rosita had been astonished when he had told her that Helen had accused him of having a mistress, namely Isabel de Silva. She didn’t care very much for the Goanese woman, believing her quiet, unobtrusive manner to be a cloak for a deeper and darker side of her personality but Rosita, herself, had never noticed any familiarity between Gavin and his housekeeper.

Gavin French was the only man her beautiful Helen had truly loved and Rosita had no doubt that that he, too, had fallen madly in love with his wife.

She watched the carriage disappear down the long drive and offered a silent prayer for the future of these two people dearest to her heart.

The syce, who tended the horses, was the carriage driver that day and Helen remembering that it was his wife, Lalitha, who had fostered the little orphaned Lazarus after the earthquake, asked how the child had settled in.

‘He seems very happy now, Memsahib. At first, he cried every night for his parents and his sleep was disturbed by nightmares of falling roofs and the dark hole in which he lay until the soldiers dug him out. But when he cried out, Lalitha and I brought him into our bed and held him until the bad dreams disappeared. Now that fear has gone and he is a normal little boy again, who knows that he is loved by his foster parents. You should see him flying kites with the other servants’ children. His laughter is a joy to hear.’

The carriage left the north gate of the City skirting golden-green paddy fields and orchards, heavy with fruit ripening on the trees. This valley, she had been told, was famous for its apples and pears. The path then followed the winding mountain road above the river which, at this point, flowed rapidly through a narrow cleft in the valley floor. The mountain track to the fort was just wide enough in parts for the carriage and horses. Dark-green, forested hillsides rose steeply on one side of the path, whilst on the other side, the land plunged precipitously into the fast flowing river below. It had rained during the night and Helen noticed, with relief, that the syce was driving very carefully.

She always loved this journey especially when she, herself, was on horseback: the sound of the river in its quieter moments, gurgling and rippling over its boulder strewn bed, the dark green, pine forested hill slopes and there beyond the tree line, the snow capped peaks of the mighty Himalayas, rising from fifteen to twenty thousand feet towards the brilliant blue Himalayan sky, today dappled with fluffy clouds. At times, of course, the mountains were masked by mists which drifted down to the lower peaks, hovering like fluffy cotton wool above the valley.

To-day the river was in a more turbulent mood, the recent rainfall swelling its waters until it roared through the narrow gorge. When she looked out over the sides of the track, she saw the dangerous torrent below and was glad the syce had the horses well in hand. Suddenly the carriage stopped and Helen heard the syce’s voice raised in alarm.

‘Why are we stopping, syce?’ shouted Helen and leaned sideways to look out of the carriage window. A man appeared suddenly in the opening, a man dressed in black with the ends of his turban draped over the lower half of his face to conceal his identity. All that she could see were his peculiarly, light coloured eyes.

‘What do you want; who are you?’ demanded Helen, but before she could utter another word, the man jumped into the carriage and threw a black cloth over her head, blotting out all light. Helen felt herself pushed roughly to the floor of the phaeton. Someone shouted something in a language she did not understand and she felt the carriage moving again and the weight of her captor’s feet on her back. She was stifling under the cloth and tried to remove it, but the feet kicked her and she heard a voice, a somewhat familiar voice, command in English, ‘Lie still, Lady French, unless you want me to render you unconscious.’

Helen could hear the whip being used on the horses and their almost uncontrolled flight. What had they done to the poor syce, she wondered, for this driver of the phaeton was surely not her careful servant. She tried to ask her captor, but her words were muffled by the cloth over her head and he didn’t hear her, or refused to answer. The erratic movement of the carriage wheels on the rough track and her bowed position on the floor, were making her very uncomfortable and she clutched her stomach as if she would cushion the effects of this nightmare journey on her unborn child.

Suddenly the carriage stopped and hands were lifting her and then she was once again set on her feet and the stifling cloth removed from her head. Helen looked around and saw she was in a courtyard. She was pushed towards the open door of the house and made to lie on a cushioned divan in the room beyond. Women in saris were crowding around her, undressing

her until she lay there white and naked. Someone produced a jar of aromatic oil and proceeded to massage her body, someone else painted the soles of her feet and the palms of her hand with a red dye and placed a red tikka mark in the centre of her forehead. Then hands pulled her to her feet and wrapped a diaphanous, white sari around her body. Her hair was loosened from its ringlets and brushed into a shining cape down her back and about her shoulders and hibiscus flowers were pinned behind her ears. She smelt of attar of roses and sandalwood and the strong perfumes began to give her a sickening headache.

Helen pressed her fingers against her throbbing temples as if to dislodge the pain and realising she had a raging thirst, asked for a drink of water,

‘Pani, please,’ and one of the women brought her a glass of iced lassi. She drank the cool, yoghourt milk gratefully, but almost immediately felt giddy. Everything around her was revolving and before she passed out, Helen realised that the drink they had just given her had been drugged.

She was lying down now, but it was as if her body floated above the woman on the divan. She could hear music and see flashing lights and her floating body had no weight but glided gently towards the rainbow lights at the end of a tunnel where Gavin was waiting, his arms open to hold her, his kisses burning her flesh. His mouth was saying something, but she could not hear his words because the music filled the room, but his eyes were black as coals and burning into her soul and then it was not Gavin, but the black goddess Kali, lifting her arms, bending her leg in the movement of the Bharata Natyam, her terrible red tongue lolling from her mouth, her black eyes flickering as if she was alive.

Helen saw that she was now in a sort of grotto, lit by kerosene torches and flickering clay oil lights. She could hear the faint sound of the waterfall in the background, but this vast cave was not the small, dank one she had visited earlier. Indians, men and women, were seated cross-legged in a semi circle around the ebony black idol and Helen, herself, was now lying on a raised stone dais in the centre of the circle. A low chanting was coming from the people and Helen heard the words, ‘Kunkali, Kunkali, our Dark Mother.’

Helen looked again at the terrible Kali, the flickering torches casting a shadow of the idol on the wall behind, and as she looked, the shadow seemed to grow and dominate the cave. Was she still hallucinating from the drug they had given her, but even though she found she was not bound, Helen could not move a muscle.

Then the music stopped and a man dressed in a hooded white cloak stepped onto a cotton sheet, which one of the worshippers had spread before the idol. He raised his hands as if in benediction of those around him and said in English, in a voice which seemed strangely familiar to Helen.

‘Brothers, today I will speak to you in English and not Ramasi, our secret language, which some of you have yet to learn. Our Cult, which has been blessed by our Goddess Kali for centuries, has been brutally destroyed by the British and many of our brothers have betrayed us to save their own lives. Amongst these, I regret to say, was my own ancestor, Chandra Lal, who sold his soul to the Englishman called William French.’

There was a murmuring amongst the followers as the name ‘French’ was mentioned and the man in the white cloak continued,

‘Yes, you recognise the name, brothers. That man was the ancestor of the Resident at the Court of the Nawab of Mirapore, Sir Gavin French, and the husband of the English woman who is our captive to-day and who will be our instrument of vengeance in the name of our Dark Mother.’

Once again the voices of the crowd were raised in unison, ‘Kunkali, Kunkali. Let us do her will, Huzoor of Thuggees.’

The leader raised both arms for silence and continued,‘You all know how our cult came into being, but today I will repeat that wondrous saga so all our followers may know how blessed we are.

‘In the beginning the Creator created mankind but the Demon of Blood and Seed killed his creations as they were born. Then Kali, the wife of our Lord Shiva, took her sword and killed the demon and drank his blood which turned her skin blue black, but some of the demon’s blood was spilt on the earth and the demon’s seed sprouted and more demons sprang up to kill the Creator’s creations.

‘Kali worked hard, slashing with her sword, but as many demons as she killed so many more sprang up from their blood split on the earth, until Kali was tired and lay down to rest. Drops of sweat fell to the ground, as she wiped her blue black arms with her handkerchief and the Creator took pity on her and made helpers from her sweat. She gave these men her handkerchief and told them to strangle the demons so that their blood would not fall to the earth and multiply and when the men had done her will and returned her handkerchief, she said. ‘You have saved mankind and all men shall be yours. Keep the rumel and use it to kill and to live.’

Then taking a bag near the feet of the goddess, the leader emptied the contents of raw brown sugar lumps onto the sheet and said to the crowd, ‘This is the sweetness of Kali. Take and eat. You are hers and she is yours and from this day, we will be her servants again, and wield the sacred rumel to kill the British.’

The sugar was collected in the bag again and passed round to the seated followers who were chanting, ‘Kali, Kunkali, to-day you will be avenged!’

The music - the clash of cymbals, the beat of tablas and the clinking sound of brass anklets and bracelets worn by Indian dancing girls, started again. A glistening, naked woman appeared, her long black hair greased and hanging like snakes about her slender shoulders, her toes splayed, one leg lifted in imitation of the dancing stance of the goddess. Helen, with a start, recognised the dancer - she was Isabel de Silva. Isabel was obviously drugged, her eyes enormous in her small, dark face, her pupils mere pinpoints. Her foot stamped down in the movements of the temple dance and her hands, wrists and neck moved to the beat of tablas. It was not Isabel de Silva but Kali, herself, who danced, anklets clinking, the terrible head moving stiffly from side to side, backwards and forwards in time to the music.

Then it was Isabel again, spinning wildly like a whirling dervish until she gasped and fell in front of the goddess, a violent tremor shaking her small body.

Another figure jumped into the circle and knelt over Isabel, the man in the white cloak which he discarded to reveal that he, too, was stark naked, his hands reaching for the woman’s breasts, his lust displayed in his erect penis. The couple writhed on the floor and touched each other obscenely and Helen was shocked when she realised that the man was Vincent de Silva. So he was the man who had kidnapped her, his light eyes and the voice she remembered from that other temple. Suddenly, Helen recalled Maria’s painting of the lovers and she felt sick with disgust. Did Gavin’s first wife know of these siblings’ incestuous relationship, or was their unnatural behaviour just another part of the depraved Left Hand Path that these followers of Kali followed?

Helen closed her eyes and heard herself praying loudly, trying to drown out the fanatical calls of the Kali worshippers, now roused to fever pitch, as they watched the incestuous gyrations of the couple on the floor.

‘Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee, Blessed art Thou amongst woman and Blessed is the Fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for me, a sinner, now and at the hour of my death,’ intoned Helen, to the prayer she had learnt from her beloved Rosita.

Then she heard herself almost shouting the Lord’s Prayer and as if in answer, the music stopped and the Kali worshippers were silent. The naked figure of Vincent de Silva approached her. His hands reached out and tore the white sari from her body, leaving her as naked as himself. He was salivating and even though he had coupled with his sister a few moments ago, Helen noticed, with a terrible dread, that he was quite capable of violating her.

He was climbing onto the dais, his hands pulling her legs apart when a sudden commotion made him jump to his feet and turn around. A tall rider on horseback rode into the circle scattering the screaming worshippers. The horse reared on its hind legs and at the rider’s signal, brought them down on the body of Vincent de Silva, as he stood in open-mouthed terror. He fell backwards, his chest crushed by the iron hooves. Helen screamed as the Horseman of the Apocalypse, for so she believed this apparition was, dismounted and came towards her.

With relief she saw that it was Gavin, who lifted her in his arms and cried, ‘Oh, my darling Helen, have they hurt you?’ Helen was sobbing, partly from relief, partly from the strain of her ordeal and Gavin held her closer in his arms whispering into her hair, ‘Hush, my little sweetheart, I am here now and you are safe. My God, if anything had happened to you, I don’t think I could have borne it.’

Then Gavin became aware of her nakedness and taking off his shirt, draped it around her.

Suddenly they heard John MacGregor’s shout, ‘Watch out, Gavin!’ and when they both looked up, they were momentarily mesmerised by the sight of the small, mad figure of Isabel de Silva, as she rose from her brother’s crushed body and came towards them. She looked like a demon, her mouth snarling, her lips stretched across her pointed, feral teeth, a long sharp knife held murderously in one raised hand, and then she screeched, ‘Kali, be avenged!’ The knife was inches away from Gavin when a shot rang out and the woman fell, a look of incredulity on her face.

John MacGregor was by their side now, his gun still smoking from the fatal shot that had killed the demon that was once Isabel de Silva.

‘The soldiers are rounding up the Thuggees and will look after the bodies of these two,’ John said grimly, pointing his pistol in the direction of the naked corpses of the sister and brother. Isabel had fallen on top of the crushed torso of her brother and it appeared that even death could not separate this unholy pair.

Gavin mounted Sultan and asked John to pass his wife to him. Tenderly, John lifted Helen and placed her in front of her husband on the horse and with one arm holding her tightly, Gavin rode back to the Residency followed by John MacGregor and Ram Das.

Helen leaned back against her husband’s naked, broad chest and closed her eyes remembering that gentle beech and oak forest of England where Gavin had held his little seven-year-old cousin in his arms, much as he was doing now, and carried her to safety away from the trolls and witches of her childhood nightmares.

Chapter 18

Rosita was leaning over Helen when she awoke in her own bedroom at the Residency. The overpowering oils and red dye had been washed from her body and she had been changed into a cool, cotton nightgown.

‘She’s awake at last, Gavin,’ said Rosita and Gavin, who had been standing by the window, was across the room in rapid strides to kneel by his wife’s bedside.

He reached for her hand and turning the palm over kissed it tenderly. ‘How are you feeling, little sweetheart? Doctor Graham has examined you and he insists that you stay in bed for a few days longer. The shock you have had has been enormous. You will heed his advice, won’t you, my darling?’ he pleaded.

Helen knew, even though Gavin had not said so, that they were thinking of the risk to her unborn child. She put her hands over her belly and smiled sweetly, her lids heavy again with sleep.

It was in the night that the pains erupted. Helen had been dreaming of a dark, dank cave and a man prostrate before the ferocious effigy of the Goddess Kali. His fingers were clutching at the black feet of the idol and he was crying out for her mercy. Kunkali looked down at him unmoved, her blood red tongue slithering from her fanged mouth, like a serpent. Two of

her four hands, not holding the pickaxe and rumel, moved towards the suppliant and a snake wound itself around the man’s neck, tightening its coils until his choking gasps were stilled.

Then Helen awoke screaming as terrible pains racked her body and she knew that she was losing her child.

Gavin was there and Rosita and soon both Doctor Patel and Doctor Graham, but Helen knew that there was nothing they could do. Kali had been avenged. Gavin’s heir was being strangled in her womb.

They removed the bleeding remains of her child and as if in a dream, Helen heard Gavin pleading with the doctors to save her life. Why, she wondered? Did he believe that she could bear him another child, another child to be taken by the terrible Goddess in retribution for the avarice of Gavin’s ancestor? No, never again would she allow them to murder her unborn infant.

It was this thought that stayed with Helen when she at last recovered. She looked pale and thin and her eyes were as empty as her heart when she looked at her husband. Gavin saw this look and was perplexed.

He came to her that night, ‘Let me lie beside you to-night, my darling. I only want to hold you in my arms to comfort you. No, don’t turn away from me,’ he pleaded and Helen hearing the hurt in his voice, felt a savage compulsion to wound him even more, as they, the demons of Kali, had tortured her child.

‘Leave me alone, Gavin. I am not ready to risk another child. Perhaps, I never will be,’ and with a stubborn finality, she turned her back on him.

The days and nights passed and despite his pleading, Helen continued to reject Gavin’s love.

‘I can’t get near her, Rosita. She just pushes me away. It is as if she blames me for bringing her to India, for not heeding this Curse of Kali, for endangering our child,’ he said to the Spanish woman one day when they were alone.

‘When I think of what might have happened to her, I blame myself for not taking that diabolical Curse seriously. Just think, Rosita, if the relief guard riding to the Residency had not found the half-stangled syce in time for us to learn of her kidnap and the location of the secret Temple of Kali, which they had visited previously. How can I ever forget the sight of that monster intent on raping her and his half-crazed sister rushing at us with her knife,’ said Gavin, his white knuckled hands clenched in agony.

‘Did you not have any inkling about Isabel’s associations with this cult, Gavin?’ asked Rosita.

Gavin was standing at the window of his study, watching his wife walking in the garden. Rosita had brought him a tray of tea, but the cup she had poured for him was untouched.

He turned to Rosita when he heard her question and moving over to the mantelpiece, helped himself to a cigar from a box of carved walnut wood.

He took his time lighting it, and Rosita wondered whether he would answer her question.

Then he said quietly, ‘How could I know? Isabel had worked for Maria, as a lady’s maid and our housekeeper. They were inseparable but it was Maria who warned me of Isabel’s profligate brother, Vincent. It seemed he was light-fingered and several valuable trinkets went missing from the Residency after his visits to his sister. But apart from banning him from coming here, there was no reason to believe him to be any more dangerous than a petty thief.’

‘Why did Maria not bear you a child, Gavin? She was very beautiful,’ asked Rosita. Gavin started and looked questioningly at her.

‘How did you know what she looked like, Rosita? There are no portraits of Maria here in the Residency.’

‘Isabel showed Helen and me a self-portrait of Maria, which I believe you had asked her to destroy after your first wife’s death. There were also other very erotic paintings of Indian women and one of the Goanese brother and sister naked in a most unnatural embrace,’ said Rosita, blushing when she remembered her shock on seeing the pictures.

‘What happened to the paintings?’ asked Gavin sharply, his brow furrowed in annoyance.

‘Don’t worry, Gavin, Helen insisted that Isabel should burn them, but she pleaded to keep the portrait of Maria, which she took away from the Residency.’

Gavin sat down in an armchair opposite Rosita, drawing on his cigar, his eyes narrowed against the smoke. After some moments he said, ‘My relationship with Maria was a very strange one, Rosita. When we were married, I thought I could love her. She was beautiful in an exotic way, but very secretive which I mistook for shyness. However, soon after we were married, I discovered that her sexual tastes were not for men, but for women. It was not entirely her fault. She told me that her Nepalese ayah had, from a very young age, introduced her to the lesbian love immortalised in the poetry of Sappho of Lesbos.’

‘I am so sorry, Gavin. Did you never try to change her? You are a handsome and charming man and I notice very attractive to women,’ said Rosita with a smile.

‘The only time Maria would let me make love to her was when she had taken some sort of drug and then she became another person - strange, erotic but very coarse in her lust, almost evil … well, she revolted me. It was when I discovered her habit of visiting the bazaars to paint and sleep with young Indian prostitutes, that I decided enough was enough. I was considering asking her for a divorce, when she contracted smallpox from the bazaars and died.’

‘And then your father suggested you should marry Helen,’ continued Rosita. 'You know she has loved you since she was a child,’ and when Gavin looked up in surprise, Rosita went on, ‘Helen has no secrets from me, Gavin. I heard all about your dramatic rescue of her from the English forest when she was a little girl and I saw how avidly she followed your career in the East India Company as the years went by. I knew when Sir Terence asked her to consent to be your wife, she would not hesitate, although she pretended to need time to consider his proposition.’

‘Then why did she tell me that she only married me for my position and title? Yes, she said that on the day after our wedding,’ said Gavin, when he saw Rosita’s disbelief etched on her expressive face.

‘No doubt it was because she believed you still loved Maria, or more likely, that Isabel de Silva was your mistress. This was one secret Helen kept from me, although I knew something was wrong between you two.’

‘Rosita, I fell in love with Helen the moment I saw her. How could I do otherwise? No other woman has ever moved me the way she has and yet she is so stubborn but before this terrible catastrophe, I believe she was coming to accept my love for her and for her alone. Now I think she hates me!’ said Gavin grimly, his eyes dark with misery as he bowed his head between his hands. Rosita stood up and came to stand beside him. She put her hand on his dark curls and said gently, ‘Don’t give up on her, Gavin. Give her time; like any woman who suffers a miscarriage, she is confused and bitter about the loss of her baby. I have always believed that you two are soulmates and one day your love for each other will win.’

******

A polo match was arranged in the grounds of the Nawab’s palace, the Nawab’s team challenging the British. It was a warm day and Helen, dressed in a cool white dress, held a white lace parasol over her head, as she sat in a covered pavilion between Agnes Cameron and Blanche de Colbert.

Helen’s eyes turned often to the dashing figure of her husband, dark and strikingly handsome in his cream riding breeches and polo shirt. His athletic figure, dark brown curls, damp with sweat, tumbling over his forehead and his grace as a rider playing the game with skill and daring, made him undeniably attractive and Helen could not fail to observe the many women watching him.

She caught his eye at one point when he was changing ponies and he lifted one shoulder in an ironic shrug and smiled that wicked, impudent smile that always set her heart thumping. Then he was back in the fray of the polo field and Helen’s blushes were not lost on her friend, Blanche de Colbert.

‘In society in France, ma petite, it is considered bad manners for a husband to be so much in love with his own wife,’ joked the effervescent Creole.

*******

It was in May 1857, that a telegram arrived at the fort informing the Resident and Brigadier General Sir James Cameron that Indian army sepoys had revolted in Meerut, killed their officers and British civilians in the town and were marching on Delhi to rally behind the Moghul Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, against the British.

It was decided to play down the revolt for fear of arousing passions amongst the Indian troops at the fort in Mirapore. Gavin called on the Nawab to ensure that there would be no question of his loyalty to the British.

In his capacity as Resident, he wrote to the Governor General, Lord Canning, in Calcutta, ‘Most of the royal princes realise that their own sovereignty depends on their treaties with the British, in the absence of which there would be a return to the chaos, the fear and insecurity which followed the fragmentation of the Moghul Empire after the death of the last great Moghul, Aurungzib, in 1707. I believe that we will have no trouble with Mohammed Hassan Khan in Mirapore, although his son, Prince Ali and his ambitious French mother, must be carefully watched.’

Then over the ensuing months, the news of the spread of the revolt - the occupation of Delhi by the mutineers; the siege of the Residency in Lucknow where many of their friends resided; the treachery of Nana Sahib and his slaughter of British men, women and children in Cawnpore -reached the Europeans in Mirapore and brought feelings of disquiet and fear.

Precautions were taken to ensure that the troops at the fort remained uncorrupted by the mutineers. Gavin introduced a system of permits at the borders of the State and British soldiers were stationed, with the reluctant consent of the Nawab, at border points. Letters to the Indian troops at the fort were opened in case mutinous rebels communicated with them. John Lawrence, the powerful Administrator of the Punjab, assured Gavin that the Punjab would remain peaceful and that he could rely on his Sikh troops’ loyalty.

Then Lord Canning commanded John Lawrence to send troops to the aid of the Delhi Field Force that was pinned down on the ridge facing the city. Lawrence’s Punjabi troops, under the command of Brigadier John Nicholson, began to cross the Sutlej and Brigadier General Sir James Cameron was ordered to swell these forces by his Sikh and Highland troops under the command of Captain John MacGregor. John’s promotion had been confirmed from Calcutta only a few weeks earlier, to the delight of all his friends.

Gavin was uneasy. Only a small force of loyal Gurkhas and a few British troops were left to defend the fort. The check points were now guarded by the Nawab’s Rohillas, Afghan mercenaries who had little reason for loyalty to the British, pondered Gavin.

Sir James Cameron and Gavin followed the course of the mutiny. Standing over a map, spread out on a table, Gavin’s fingers traced the large region of India, centred around the holiest places, which was now in the hands of the mutineers and when details of the murder in Cawnpore of women and children reached them, there was a sense of horror.

‘It seems Major General Sir Henry Havelock’s relief forces arrived too late to prevent the bloody massacre of two hundred British women and children,’ said Sir James, an expression of deep sadness on his old campaigner’s face, as he handed the despatch to Gavin.

Gavin, concerned for Helen after the recent loss of their own child, kept the worst reports from her.

The Residency at Lucknow was relieved by Henry Havelock after a siege of eighty-eight days, and Gavin brought the good news to his wife who knew many of the British families living in that town.

‘Our half-starved friends are now safe, thank God,’ said Gavin, ‘but we do not know how many have survived the relentless barrage and pounding of the Residency walls.’

Telegraph lines, cut by the mutineers, were now being repaired and news of the British Army’s courageous assault against Delhi came through. Prayers were offered at the fort’s little chapel for the safety of Captain John MacGregor and their Highland friends, who were part of Nicholson’s four columns, fighting their way, street by street, through the city against

tremendous odds.

In September, Gavin had news of the British sacking of the city and the subsequent occupation of the Royal Palace by Brigadier Archdale Wilson. He told Helen, ‘Delhi is now firmly in the hands of the British. I understand the princes of the Royal Court have been executed for their part in the rising and the Old Emperor has been imprisoned.’

‘So Princess Muna’s husband must be amongst the executed royal princes,’ said Helen with a strange feeling of satisfaction that the man, who had caused so much pain to her friend, was now dead.

Another name, Sir Colin Campbell, the recently appointed Commanderin-Chief, India, began to appear in dispatches. Campbell turned his attention to Oudh, which was the home of a large proportion of the high-caste sepoys recruited by the British Army. These men were now mutineers and rallied behind their King of Oudh, who had refused to sign the treaty surrendering his State to the British in 1854.

At last, letters from John MacGregor were received. Apart from two Highlanders slightly wounded, he and all his troops were safe and well. They were marching with Colin Campbell to relieve Rohilkand, the neighbouring province to Oudh. John feared that because of delays in the fighting and, subsequently, the orgies of retribution, drunkenness and looting by some British troops (which their commanders seemed unable, or unwilling to curb) many rebels had been allowed to escape. They fled to forts of rebel Princes whose own States had been annexed by the British under Lord Dalhousie’s Doctrine of Lapse.

‘It may be best if all British civilians and any Europeans living in Mirapore were moved to the British fort for protection. Large forces of these mutineers are on their way to the foothills and others have fled to Central India, where the revolt is still to be subdued,’ John warned.

Gavin collected Helen and Rosita and with their horses and one carriage, made their way to the fort, where Lady Agnes had prepared quarters for them. Ram Das, the syce, his wife, Lalitha and little Lazarus, accompanied them, because the syce explained, ‘My loyalty is with you, Sahib, and not with these mad men. What will they do when they have gained their freedom? Will they give us work and put bread in our children’s mouths?’

Gavin had already organised the transport to the fort of British civilians living in and around Mirapore and at the request of the French Consul, arranged for the escort of the Comte and Comtesse de Colbert and their servants to quarters in the fort.

‘These mutineers are hardly likely to love the French any more than the British, Gavin. We, too, are a Western colonial power in their country,’ explained the Comte.

Chapter 19

Two days after their arrival at the fort, the sentries in the watch towers alerted the Command to the large force of rebel sepoys marching into the Valley of Mirapore. They appeared to march in good order with regimental pennants flying. Their voices singing, incongruously, familiar British army marching songs were carried on the wind to the fort.

‘No upstart force this’, observed Sir James, training his telescope on the rebels, ‘but well-trained, former Company Army infantry and cavalry, now led by non commissioned Indian officers. One can scarcely believe they have only recently murdered their British officers and families.’

It was midday when Helen noticed that Gavin and Ram Das were missing. She had a terrible presentiment that they were still in the city of Mirapore, now about to be occupied by the mutineers and her fears were confirmed by Sir James.

‘Yes, Helen,’ he replied. ‘Gavin felt that as Resident, he should be at the Nawab’s side to broker any negotiations with the rebels. The Nawab is pro-British, but for how long? Gavin is determined to prevent the Nawab going the way of the Rani of Jhansi and proclaiming his State independent. I have heard that the small British community in the fort at Jhansi were massacred, as at Cawnpore, despite being promised safe passage.’

Helen was suddenly very afraid and sought out Rosita. She clung to her Spanish friend sobbing, ‘Why must my husband put his duty before everything else? He is in mortal danger if the Nawab is persuaded by the rebels to support them. Oh, Rosita, I love him so much and we have been unhappily estranged since my miscarriage.’

‘I know, queridisima, Gavin told me how deeply hurt he was by your rejection. En verdad he loves you as much as you have always loved him. But dry your tears, little one. You should know by now that your husband is a brave and resourceful man and will not endanger his life unnecessarily.’

Still kneeling by Rosita’s chair, Helen lifted her tear-stained face and asked quietly, ‘Tell me what he said to you, Rosita … about me.’

She listened in silence as Rosita told her about her conversation with Gavin, his love for Helen and his hurt by her continued rejection of him. He blamed himself for not taking the Curse of Kali seriously and putting Helen’s life in danger with Isabel de Silva.

Helen listened in surprise when Rosita told her about Gavin’s unfortunate marriage to his first wife, Maria, and the discovery of her lesbian tendencies that had revolted him, especially when he learnt of her visits to the bazaars to sleep with Indian prostitutes.

‘He was even contemplating divorce’, said Rosita, ‘because it was a matter of time before Maria’s lifestyle became public knowledge amongst the British community here in Mirapore and in the Company administration in general. That would have made it impossible for Gavin to continue as Resident. I believe it was fortuitous for Gavin that Maria contracted smallpox and her death relieved him of the trauma and disgrace of divorce, especially the hurt he would cause her parents for whom he held a deep affection and respect.’

That night was a sleepless one for Helen and she was awake with the early dawn to stand on the ramparts to watch for Gavin and Ram Das. It was late afternoon when two riders approached the portcullis of the fort and Helen recognising Gavin and his servant, almost tripped over her long, dark grey, worsted skirt racing down the much trodden, centuries old, granite steps to arrive, breathless, just as the heavy gate was swung open.

Gavin looked surprised to see his wife standing there, her auburn hair flying about her shoulders, her beautiful face flushed above the white lace collar of her dark grey blouse. But it was the look in her emerald eyes which were shining with love that took his breath away.

He vaulted off his horse and ran towards her, enfolding her in his arms, his face buried in her hair as she, and she alone, heard him whisper, ‘My little sweetheart, my little love, did you miss me?’ An embarrassed cough nearby brought the lovers abruptly back to earth and Gavin reluctantly released his wife when he saw the soldier waiting patiently.

‘Yes, sergeant?’ Gavin enquired.

The sergeant saluted smartly and said, ‘Compliments from Sir James, sir. He asked me to fetch you as soon as you returned.’

‘Yes, sergeant, I intended to report to Sir James as soon as I got back, but I was pleasantly distracted.’ His wink and impudent smile brought blushes to Helen’s cheeks, as Gavin bent down and kissed her on her lips before moving away with the sergeant. Helen picked up her skirt and made her way back to her apartments with as much dignity as she could muster, not daring to turn round to observe the guards at the gate who, she guessed, would be smirking and nudging each other in the manner of soldiers.

It was over dinner in the officer’s mess that Gavin gave an account to his fellow officers and their wives of his dealings with the Nawab.

‘The Nawab, at my insistence, sent his Rohillas to deny entry to the rebels who were encamped outside the city gates and to demand their surrender. He warned them that any forced entry would be met by equal force and his treaty with the British would ensure that Company’s troops would be called to his assistance.

‘I have not, of course, informed the Nawab of our depleted forces here at the fort: he believes we are at full strength. He is also aware that a large force of loyal Sikh troops from the Punjab is on its way to Mirapore. Here again, I did not mention to the Nawab that dispatches for aid to John Lawrence in Lahore have only just been sent by Lord Canning, our Governor General in Calcutta. The Nawab believes that Sikh troops are even now crossing the Sutleg.’

‘Good, Gavin’, said one of the Highland officers, ‘these rebel chaps know how fiercely they have been dealt with in Oudh by our forces. Will they pack up and leave now, do you think?’

‘I am afraid not,’ said Sir James, ‘there is a further setback, which Gavin will now explain.’

‘Whilst I was in conference with the Nawab and Prince Hassan, the Chief Eunuch of the harem, Ibrahim, asked to speak to the Nawab privately. It appears that Begum Shalima’s spies have discovered a plot by Prince Ali and his French mother to deal directly with the rebels who believe, with justification, that to surrender would mean certain death at the hands of the British. In exchange for their help in seizing the throne, Prince Ali has given them carte blanche to storm the fort and slaughter the Europeans before the arrival of any British relief forces.’

‘Did his father arrest Prince Ali and his French mother, Gavin?’ enquired Lady Agnes.

‘Unfortunately, we were too late’, replied Gavin. ‘The prince and his mother had already left the palace with an escort of bribed Rohilla guards to negotiate with the Rebels. The Nawab and Prince Hassan pleaded with me to leave with Ram Das, as they feared that my presence in the palace would only complicate the position.’

‘Well, gentlemen and ladies,’ said Sir James. To be forewarned is to be forearmed and we know that a siege of the fort is imminent. We will resist until we are relieved. Fortunately, the Emperor Akbar built this fort to withstand siege and its walls are almost impregnable. On one side, the cliff face is perpendicular and the only road leading to the gates of the fort is well within the range of our guns.

‘I will leave you ladies to organise the rationing of our food supplies, the medical team will be Doctor Graham and Helen, assisted at her request by the Comtesse de Colbert. And now, gentlemen, we must examine our defences and ammunition.’ Brigadier General Sir James pushed back his chair and rose to his feet with the air of a man determined to acquit himself

as military commander of the small British garrison at Mirapore.

It was late when Gavin came to their room that night. He looked tired and Helen, who had been entering her diary of events that day, seated at a little escritoire, stood up and came towards him.

‘You look tired, my darling. Come, let me help you off with your boots. There is some hot water I ordered for your bath, but it must be cold now,’ she said, turning and taking each booted leg between her thighs, as she had done so often for her father after they had been riding together.

When the boots and hose were off, Gavin stood up and allowed his beautiful wife to undress him, only stopping her by holding her hand when she would have removed his breeches. Then he laughed and allowed her to continue, stepping out of his breeches until he stood stark naked before her, his bold eyes no longer showing any sign of weariness, but glinting with amusement as he saw her blush at the sight of his erection.

‘See what you have done, woman. That is what happens when you come so close to your husband. Don’t you know how irresistible you are, sweetheart?’

Then lifting her gently, he carried her to their bed and removed the flimsy shift she was wearing, his hands, lips and tongue following every lovely contour of her body. He made love to her as he had never done before, now that he knew that his love was returned and Helen sighed with longing as Gavin’s endearments, his kisses and his touch inflamed her senses. She felt that earthy sensuality that only this man could arouse in her and as his naked body moved over hers, flesh on flesh, she cried out her love and need for him, ‘Gavin, my darling, how I love you!’

He kissed her swollen lips again hard and possessively, almost shouting in his rapture, ‘At last, at last, my beautiful Helen, how I have longed to hear those words from your lips,’ and lifting her hips towards him, he possessed her unable any longer to hold back his pent-up hunger for her.

As he lay spent on her breast, she whispered, ‘My darling, is it always so wonderful between lovers?’

‘No, little sweetheart, only between us because, as Rosita says, you are my soulmate,’ and Gavin smiled as he enveloped her closer in his arms, content at last that their misunderstanding was past and they could love each other without reserve.

Long after Gavin slept in her arms, Helen lay awake, listening to his even breathing and when she touched his face tenderly, he smiled in his sleep and Helen knew that whatever hardships overtook them in the days ahead, this moment would be theirs to treasure.

The next day was hectic; the fort was preparing for siege. The ramparts were thronged with soldiers, checking the heavy guns mounted on the walls and in the courtyard troops were testing their musketry and sharpening their bayonets and knives. Home-made bombs, infernal machines, huge stones and blocks of wood to impel scaling ladders, were assembled together with other missiles to be hurled on the heads of the invaders. One of the young officers, whose father had fought in Spain against Napoleon, made it his task to collect lime. This, he explained, had been thrown in the eyes of French soldiers who had succeeded in storming a fort defended by a handful of Wellington’s grenadiers. The lime filled grenades were piled in strategic places on the ramparts and near the fort gates.

Helen and Doctor Graham prepared the little hospital, hoping that there would be few causalities. Lady Agnes and the officers wives inspected the food stores, instructing the cooks to use only the perishable food first. The stores of fresh apples and pears were checked and each fruit was wrapped in paper to preserve and prevent contamination as it ripened. The floors of the cellars in the fort were cold stone and Agnes told Helen their supplies of salt beef, pork, fresh fruit, preserves, cereals, lentils and rice should keep well. There was plenty of flour for bread.

There was, however, only one well inside the fort perimeter, and because of the low rainfall that summer, it was not as full as they would have wished, but before the siege started, the soldiers had taken mules to the river below and filled as many water skins as they could to be stored in the cellars.

The fort was crowded, not only with soldiers, but with British civilians, merchants, women and children and other Europeans, amongst them the French Consul, his wife and their staff. In all there were about 3000 people, only half of these fighting men.

The Indian troops, mostly Sikhs and Gurkhas, renewed their pledge of loyalty and Sir James and Gavin had no doubt that they would not be betrayed by these splendid native soldiers.

That day Sir James told his officers, ‘The relief force from the Punjab has been held up because Sikh troops sent for the relief of Delhi have not yet returned and John Lawrence is reluctant to deplete his forces further, until he is sure the Punjab will not mutiny. I believe we can hold out for at least three weeks but this is for your ears only, gentlemen. We do not wish to cause any anxiety amongst the civilians here in the fort.’

That night, under cover of darkness, the mutineers fires appeared in the valley below as they set up camp well away from the range of guns on the fort walls. Through their telescopes, the British officers saw the formidable numbers of rebel troops, former company sepoys, their numbers swelled by the Nawab’s Rohillas. It was obvious that Prince Ali had succeeded in overthrowing his father and brother.

The morning saw a siege train of heavy artillery being hauled by palace elephants and despite heavy fire from the fort, native engineers began constructing battery positions to bombard the walls. As many unfortunate sepoys were killed by artillery fire from the fort, their places were taken by others, until it seemed to the British watching from the ramparts, that the rebels had a death wish.

If the fort had been at strength, Gavin told Helen, as she lay in his arms that night, the British would not have permitted the mutineers to enter Mirapore, but would have attacked them outside the city walls. She slept fitfully and when she awoke in the early hours of the morning, her husband was no longer by her side.

If she had known why, she would have been mortally afraid. Gavin, Ram Das and a platoon of Gurkhas crept out of the fort under cover of darkness. The Gurkhas silently drew their kukrees and slit the throats of the sepoy sentries whilst Gavin set charges to blow up the enemy batteries, so dearly erected by them a few hours ago.

When Helen saw him again, later in the morning, he was leaning against a wall in the courtyard eating chappatis and drinking mugs of tea with his Gurkhas. His short dark hair as tousled and there were powder marks on his face. Even unshaven and unkempt, he looked so handsome that her heart leaped. When Gavin looked up and saw his wife, his brown eyes

softened and that buccaneer's smile twisted his lips. Helen had heard the soldiers talking about the attack on the enemy battery and she knew now that Gavin had been involved.

‘What a sight to gladden a soldier’s heart,’ he said, coming forward to kiss his wife, but Helen’s smile was strained and she caught his arm and propelled him a little distance from his troops.

‘Gavin, you are not a soldier and should not be risking your life in these daredevil escapades. You are the Resident of Mirapore and surely there are trained officers to infiltrate enemy lines.’

His fingers touched her lips gently and he said, ‘Hush, my darling, I was a soldier before I was appointed Resident. Besides, what can a Resident do in a fort besieged by mutineers; there are no ambassadorial duties for me here, my love, and Sir James needs every man who can fight. Even our gallant French Consul has armed himself with a rifle.’

Helen looked at Gavin, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners against the glare of the late autumn sunshine. She knew why she was bewitched by this man. His courage, his self-assurance, at times almost bordering on arrogance and his powerful masculinity, were magnets that would draw any woman. Now, unshaven and battle-stained, he was smiling at her, almost like a mischievous boy begging forgiveness for a naughty prank.

Helen laughed at his expression and looked over Gavin’s shoulder at the little brigade of Gurkhas, their wide, flat, Mongol faces wreathed in smiles, obviously enjoying the spectacle of their Sahib being taken to task by his wife and then she noticed the cut on Ram Das’s cheek.

‘I hope to see you later, Gavin, but please order Ram Das to come to the hospital for that cut to be stitched,’ she said in her severest physician’s manner and as she moved away, she heard Gavin telling the intrepid Gurkha, ‘You heard the doctor memsahib, Ram Das, jump to it!’

Late that night, when Gavin came to their bedroom, Helen was already in bed. The night was quite cold and because fuel was rationed by order of Sir James, there was no fire burning in the small iron stove in the corner of the room. Gavin, who slept naked whatever the weather, pulled back the heavy quilt quickly, sprang into bed and drew his wife’s warm body towards him.

‘Keep me warm, little sweetheart,’ he teased, his hands moving over her, bringing her the delight they always did. Helen was beginning to look forward to these nights in her husband’s arms and his ardent love-making. She put her arms about his neck and drew his mouth down to her breast.

‘Will you be leaving me again by morning?’ she asked, running her fingers through his dark curls and down his strong back, making him gasp when she slipped one hand between their bodies and touched him intimately.

‘No, sweetheart. I intend to make love to you all night. You know I can never get enough of you.’

They made love and slept only to wake and make love again and when Helen finally awoke with the the pink dawn light creeping though the latticed windows, she saw the dark eyes of her husband studying her with a quizzical look.

‘Why are you looking at me like that,?’ she asked sleepily.

His finger traced her lips still swollen from his kisses and then he gently picked up a strand of her shining hair spread out on the pillow.

‘Why? Because you have the look of a woman who has been well loved. If I was not the first to ravish you, I would find myself wondering what previous lover had instructed you so well in the art of love. But then, they say that women with hair this colour are naturally sensual,’ he smiled, his white teeth gleaming in his brown face as he lifted the lock of her perfumed hair to his lips.

Helen was to recall Gavin’s remark with a warm glow several times during her busy day, and she remembered how she had been concerned that he would find her inexperienced as a lover. The love that she felt for her handsome husband made her bold and almost wanton in their bed and she knew, instinctively, how to please him.

Chapter 20

Despite Gavin’s and the Gurkhas’ valiant efforts to cripple the enemy battery positions, the bombardment of the fort walls was not too long delayed. Howitzers and mortars, with their high trajectories, found their mark over the ramparts and 24 pounder guns started to hit the thick walls.

It was decided that the women and children should be quartered in the more sheltered areas of the fort. Now even trips to the well were becoming hazardous from exploding shells and bullets from snipers, positioned on a ridge opposite the fort.

Some of the sepoys decided to storm the British defences and their slaughter from the fort’s artillery gave the British the first clue of the inadequacy of the rebel leadership.

‘It broke my heart, milady, to see the poor blighters pushed forward repeatedly by their leaders, only to be mowed down by our guns and still they came, until the mountainside was littered with corpses,’ said a wounded Highlander, who Helen was treating in the hospital.

By evening, the sepoys came with white flags to collect their dead and wounded and the British observed a ceasefire until the last body was removed. Even though the air temperatures were lower in the Himalayan autumn, the ground on which the dead lay was still warm from the summer heat and flies swarmed everywhere, whilst vultures and carrion crows circled in the skies before swooping down to begin their macabre feast.

Helen issued strict instructions that all water was to be boiled for drinking, cooking, washing of food utensils and food, and prepared food was never to be left uncovered.

Despite her precautions, it was not long before the first cases of dysentery were diagnosed. Helen suspected that water had been drunk without boiling, or over-ripe fruit eaten. She started to prepare a room to barrier nurse the patients of this infectious disease and with Doctor Graham’s consent, decided that only she and Blanche de Colbert would attend to the dysentery cases, to prevent the infection from spreading.

Although the bombardment of the fort continued, no further attempts were made to storm the walls.

‘Perhaps they are waiting for our supplies of food and ammunition to run out,’ said Sir James. ‘Let us hope the reinforcements are here before that. The devils have cut our telegraph lines, so it is anyone’s guess when the Punjabi relief force will arrive.’

Now, after two weeks of siege, rationing was introduced, one main meal a day for adults, two for the children and a light breakfast of chappatis and tea. Helen was concerned because the dysentery patients needed nourishment and she ordered a diet of rice water, light broth thickened with arrowroot and albumin water.

She had sufficient supplies of castor oil and opium to relieve the griping pains of the disease and carbonate of bismuth and extracts of ipecacuanha for their treatment, but in the event of an epidemic, even these supplies would be severely stretched.

The beautiful Comtesse de Colbert was a source of untiring support to Helen in the treatment of her dysentery patients and she told Gavin that night, ’My admiration for the lovely Blanche has never been higher. She rolls up her sleeves and never flinches from the unpleasant aspects of nursing dysentery sufferers.’

‘She feels the same about you, my darling. Only today she told me how impressed she is with your medical expertise and skill,’ replied Gavin, fondling his wife’s exposed breasts and grinning at her wickedly and she knew that soon they would both forget that anything or anyone existed outside their world of love.

Helen was concerned about Rosita. Now sixty years old, her beloved companion was beginning to show her age and despite Helen’s entreaties to take life easier, the Spanish woman was determined to ‘pull her weight’. She had taken over the care of the children in the fort whilst their parents were engaged elsewhere. She was often found in the schoolroom teaching the children Spanish, or relating the wonderful folklore of her country and Helen recalled her own childhood, when she had sat at Rosita’s knee and listened to these very same sagas.

The rebels were now constructing a large semicircular trench with salients and a protecting ditch beyond the range of the fort artillery and the British, observing through their telescopes, were well aware that the commander of the rebels was now preparing for assault. This work was carried out mostly at night but was hampered by defensive sorties through the fort’s Sally port -a small gate set in the ramparts. These forays were designed not only to impede the investment, but to lower the moral of the rebel engineers, as their throats were slit by Gurkha kukrees, their sappers blown up by explosives and even entrenching tools were captured.

Helen knew that many of these sorties were led by her husband, because he would often return in the early morning dressed in a sepoy’s uniform with his skin stained a deeper brown and his buccaneer’s smile wider and more impudent when he greeted her. She was seeing another side to Gavin - a warrior who seemed to enjoy the thrill of battle, as if it was no more than a vigorous game of polo.

She, herself, had little time to brood. Grape shot and mortar fire were causing many casualties and dysentery was still a threat. One of the Gurkha children developed gangrenous chickenpox and its resemblance to smallpox caused a great deal of panic amongst the mothers of the other children, until Helen’s diagnosis, confirmed by Doctor Graham, calmed their fears. The child was immediately put into quarantine and although a few milder cases of the disease occurred, strict quarantine and applications of soothing zinc powder and ointments to the skin, soon brought the little patients back to health.

It was the fourth week of the siege when the reason for the apparent inaction of the mutineers became apparent. A large force of rebel reinforcements under the banner of a rebellious Maratha Maharaja, marched into Mirapore, bringing with them the Indian ruler’s big brass 18 and 24 pounder cannon and more muskets.

Now there was no time to loiter. Sir James ordered the tightening up of the defences. The ditch surrounding the fort had been scarped and mines and shells buried and horizontal row of poles (fraises) constructed to impede assault ladders. The largest battery, projecting from flanking bastions in the rampart wall, would bring enfilade fire from its three guns on the attackers; cheval-de-frise - portable obstructions of sword blades - were constructed to block any breaches in the walls; more shells, combustibles and quicklime were assembled on the parapets.

The British women, formerly ladies of leisure employing cooks, dhobis and ayas, found themselves coping with all the tasks usually performed by these servants. Firewood was becoming scarce and as the distinct chill of the Himalayan nights heralded the approach of winter, mothers started to cut up their fur coats to make garments and warm moccasins for their children. People went to bed fully dressed, but the worst aspect was the lack of news from the outside world. The besieged wondered if the Mutiny had been put down elsewhere and when the promised relief forces would come to their aid?

The lower temperatures at least prevented the spread of diseases such as cholera, although dysentery was still a problem and the hospital was now filled with the wounded. Helen and Doctor Graham worked hard, removing bullets, performing major surgery but supplies of chloroform were now very low and the doctors feared for the fate of future amputees.

Now Helen hardly saw her husband. With dangerous sorties, sentry and other duties all the men - officers and other ranks - were preparing for the inevitable assault. When they did snatch a few hours together, their lovemaking took on a new desperate hunger for each other, as if each time would be their last.

The siege was now in its sixth week and the conditions in the fort were becoming squalid. The air was filled with the smell of death and gunpowder. Rationing of food was now tighter, most meals consisting only of dhal and rice and a little meat for the fighting men. In the first few days of the siege, the enemy gunfire was not too hazardous, but the mutineers started to use incendiary shells and even flaming arrows and their small arms fire often found its mark. The little graveyard soon began to fill up, not only with dead adults, but with new-born babies who died because their mothers’ milk had dried up.

Several attempts to storm the ramparts were made, but the enemy assaults were repulsed by heavy fire from the garrison’s batteries and the mutineers did not appear to have intrepid captains to lead by example. Trumpets blowing the advance and shouts of ‘Chalo Bhai; Maro Firinghi Soor’ (Come on, brothers, kill the foreign swine) did not seem to have the desired effect on the rebels, when the British guns took their toll.

The Maharajah’s brass cannon were now pounding away at the walls but the solid masonry stood up well and where breaches occurred, these were repaired immediately, despite heavy enemy fire.

It was a few days before Christmas. The women had tried to bring some festive cheer, especially for the children, by baking small cakes from their reserves of flour and holding carol services, but everyone was aware that time was not on their side and if they were not relieved soon, their lives would be forfeit. Before the telegraph lines had been cut and despatches from Calcutta delayed, the British in Mirapore had heard of the fate of their countrymen at the hands of the mutineers: Cawnpore, where defenceless women and children were butchered, Delhi where the Europeans in the palace were slaughtered by the knives and swords of mutinous cavalry, and the murder of inhabitants at every British station along the route of the mutiny.

Several of the married men made a pact with their wives to destroy each other if the enemy achieved a breakthrough and the wounded in the hospital asked for explosives to be set in this event.

Helen asked Gavin that night, ‘My darling, will you shoot us, if I do not have the courage to take my own and Rosita’s life?’

‘Don’t worry, little sweetheart, if there is a breakthrough, I will come to you and we will die together. But this is all nonsense we are speaking; relief will be here sooner than later. A brave Highland officer, disguised as an Indian and his Gurkha corporal have, some days ago, abseiled down the precipitous side of the cliff face and are on their way to seek out the British relief columns and warn them of our plight,’ said Gavin, kissing his wife and holding her close in his arms.

The enemy were now entrenched not far from the fort, sapping ever nearer under cover of darkness and their guns were pounding the walls relentlessly. The British garrison, severely depleted even further by casualties, had to restrict their sorties to destroy enemy batteries and it was feared that if the siege continued much longer, they would run dangerously short of ammunition.

Now there was very little sleep for everyone. Mothers huddled with their children in basements, the men sharpened knives and bayonets and the officers buckled on their revolvers and swords, all prepared to repel the invader to their last breath. The constant pounding was at last having an effect on the walls and crumbling masonry would soon make a breach wide enough for a breakthrough.

Once again, when the sun dipped below the highest peaks, enemy trumpets sounded the attack and this time drums and cymbals were added to the bloodcurdling sound of the sepoys’ now familiar war cry, ‘Chalo Bhai; Maro Firinghi Soor!’ Heavy fire from the ramparts showered the oncoming hoards, cutting murderous swathes through their ranks, but still they came.

Helen sort out Rosita and brought her to the hospital, so that Gavin would know where to find them both in the event of a breakthrough. Rosita sat quietly in a corner of the ward, running the beads of her rosary through her fingers and smiling bravely whenever Helen caught her eye. Why did I allow her to come with me to India? thought Helen sadly, looking at the beloved woman who had been mother and friend to her since her own mother’s death.

It was a bright moonlight night. The mutineers had fallen back to regroup before an even more ferocious attack which, if sustained, would be impossible to repel. For a brief moment whilst they gathered, the sound of artillery was stilled.

Then, as if in a dream, the skirl of Highland pipes was carried on the winds to the ears of the desperate, besieged garrison and lookouts on the Keep were shouting, ‘The Highlanders, the Highlanders!’ Telescopes were raised and the sight of a large force of Colin Campbell’s Highland Regiment, pipers sounding the Highland Charge, brought tears of joy to the besieged. The ranks of mutineers, too astonished to turn their guns around on the Highlanders, were taken by surprise.

Sir James ordered the men of the garrison to break through the breached wall and the two forces - besieged and relief - routed the mutineers. The slaughter was horrific as swords and bayonets slashed their way through the demoralised rebels, who had seen victory snatched, so savagely, from their grasp at the very last moment.

The Maharajah, Prince Ali and his mother were captured outside the City gates by a Highland brigade positioned there to prevent the escape of mutineers. The Maharajah and the prince were brought back to the fort and held prisoner until a trial could be arranged. Prince Ali’s mother was returned to the palace to be dealt with by the Nawab and Helen had no doubt, by the Begum Shalima.

Helen, herself, had no time to join in the celebrations. Too many injured needed her attention and she and Doctor Graham worked late into the next morning. When at last she emerged from the hospital, rolling down the sleeves of her white cotton blouse, she felt herself suddenly lifted off her feet by strong arms and looking down, saw the bearded face of John MacGregor grinning with excitement. John greeted Helen with such shouts of enthusiasm that every eye turned to see who the Scottish captain was whirling around, dancing the Highland fling and hollering with joy.

‘Ah Helen, lovely, wee lass. How glad I am to see you safe and well!’ and then to the astonishment of everyone, he kissed her soundly on her lips.

‘John, you idiot, put me down and stop behaving like an overgrown puppy,’ she laughed and saw over the Scotsman’s head, her husband talking to Sir James and Colin Campbell. Gavin was about to light a cigar when he looked up and saw the reason for the commotion. He raised one eyebrow sardonically at the sight of his wife being enveloped by John MacGregor’s bear hug, but now secure in the knowledge of her love for him, this time he was not jealous, only amused: how could he blame the giant Scot for loving his beautiful wife.

John MacGregor took Helen’s arm and leading her towards her husband and Sir James introduced her to Sir Colin Campbell. ‘Sir Colin, may I introduce one of our hard working surgeons, Lady French, the wife of our Resident.’

The formidable Commander-in-Chief smiled one of his rare smiles and raising Helen’s hand to his lips said, ‘I am honoured, Lady French. How fortunate you are, Sir James, to have such a beautiful surgeon. Our field surgeons are stout fellows, but hardly the stuff of dreams.’ He laughed uproariously at his own joke and winked at Gavin, who was more than a little surprised at the gallantry and unexpected humour of this dour Scottish General.

That day there was rejoicing everywhere. Food was prepared from the fort’s meagre supplies supplemented by geese, ducks and pigeons from the Maratha Maharajah’s stores and quantities of beer found in his tent. It seemed this Indian Ruler travelled in opulent style, even to war.

Gavin and Helen listened in horror to John’s accounts of the siege of Delhi and Lucknow and the tragedy of Cawnpore, where the troops had found bloody evidence of the massacre of almost two hundred, helpless, British women and children.

‘Every British soldier who passed through Cawnpore and saw, for himself, the bloody evidence of the butchery which had taken place about the house and courtyard where these prisoners were held:-the tree from which Brigadier General Neill’s troops cut down British women hanging by their hair; the well which had been crammed with more bodies of the women and children; bloodstains of children’s tiny hands and feet on the walls; their little shoes and dresses and even their mothers’ bibles and marriage certificates still strewn around the courtyard - could not feel anything but hatred for the perpetrators.

‘I am not proud of the savage acts of awful revenge committed against the Pandies (British nickname for mutinous sepoy troops) by our own enraged troops, but when one visits Cawnpore, the British soldier’s thirst for reprisals and his uncharacteristic lack of pity, are understandable,’ said John quietly, his fists clenched and his eyes closed, as if to shut out the terrible scenes he had witnessed.

Epilogue

Helen and Gavin continued to live in the fort for a few more days until the city of Mirapore had been cleared of rebels. More British troops arrived to bring the garrison back to its former strength. Sir Colin Campbell was then able to leave with his own force and to march back to Calcutta with the royal prisoners -the Maharajah and Prince Ali. Their fate was not long delayed. A telegram from Calcutta informed the Resident that both prisoners had been

tried, found guilty of treason and executed by firing squad.

‘They received a sentence far more lenient than the sepoys they had led,’ remarked Sir James. ‘Many mutineers were strapped to and fired from our cannons.’ Then seeing the women’s looks of horror, he explained, ‘This was the way the Moghuls executed traitors: ironic, don’t you think, in view of the mutineers’ proclamation that the last of that Moghul dynasty, Bahadur Shah the Second, was the rightful Emperor of India and not the Empress Queen Victoria.’

Gavin called on the Nawab to inform him of Prince Ali’s sentence and execution. Mohammed Hassan Khan was sitting alone on his throne in the vast Audience Chamber, a man suddenly aged.

‘He is my son and I will grieve for him, Sir Gavin, but it is hard to forget his treachery, not only to the British but to his own family,’ said the Ruler of Mirapore.

Then, as if as an afterthought, he said, ‘It is strange that it should be my son, Ali, who embraced everything Western, who was the one to betray the English Raj.’

The Begum Shalima’s clinic continued to function under the direction of Doctor Patel, but there was an air of mistrust now between the Indians and the British and Helen found an unease amongst her patients. The Highlanders had set fire to many homes of villagers who had given sanctuary to rebel sepoys and Helen believed that the Indians now regarded the British as cruel and despotic as any of India’s previous conquerors.

Even the Residency was no longer the beautiful place she had come to regard as home. It had been looted and defaced, its elegant furniture and priceless paintings piled up on the lawn and reduced to ashes by the mutineers.

The mutiny was over and the British were again firmly in control, but the Governor General, Lord Canning, decided to annex the State of Mirapore to the British Crown.

Gavin now had supreme control on behalf of the company and Nawab Mohammed Hassan Khan reluctantly signed the document ceding his State to the British. He was allowed to retain his beautiful palace, where he lived out the remainder of his days on a generous pension awarded by the British.

Gavin told Helen, ‘I could not help feeling a deep sadness for the Nawab when he looked at his signature on the document and with tears in his eyes said, “So, Sir Gavin, I have signed away the sovereignty of my State, which my ancestors had won with blood, sweat and tears almost three hundred years ago.”

‘In that moment of surrender, Mohammed Hassan Khan displayed a dignity and courage equal to any of his warrior ancestors,’ said Gavin, and Helen knew that her husband was distressed that after all his work for the Nawab and Mirapore, he was the one to witness the ruler’s downfall.

Life returned slowly to normal for both the Indians and the British. The French Consul was closed and Helen and Gavin were guests at a farewell dinner hosted by their dear friends, Comte and Comtesse de Colbert, who returned to Paris with promises not to lose touch with their English friends, ‘Especially with you, my dear Helen,’ said Blanche, with tears in her eyes.

On the first of September, 1858, almost a year since the Mutiny had come to Mirapore, the rule of India was, by Act of Parliament, transferred from the Honourable East India Company to the British Crown and the administration of that strangest of trading companies came to an end.

Gavin, a Company man to the end, decided to turn down a prestigious administrative appointment in the new Indian Civil Service. He wanted to return to England with his wife and Rosita.

‘My father, although he does not say so in his letters, my darling, is feeling his age and I know he would love us all back at Charnwood Hall and for me to take over the running of the estate. What do you think? We will be able to take the horses with us on a ship used by the cavalry, who always ensure their beloved animals are well quartered aboard ship.’

‘Oh yes please, Gavin, I am sure Rosita, too, would like to return to our more temperate climate. Besides, I believe I am pregnant again and would love this child to be born in England,’ said Helen quietly, watching her husband’s dark eyes fill with wonder and joy as he lifted her off her feet, swung her around and shouted loudly, mimicking the Scottish brogue of their friend, John MacGregor.

‘My darling, wee lassie, are you sure? Do you ken how much I love you? You have made me the happiest man in the world!’ Her laughter and his wild kisses on her mouth, made it impossible for Helen to reply.

******

Before they left for India, this time by the shorter sea route of the newly-constructed Suez Canal, Gavin took Helen to Kashmir once more. Rosita had been invited to join them but declined, saying she preferred to remain with her friends in Mirapore. Helen guessed that her Spanish friend’s uncanny sixth sense knew that the lovers wanted to be alone on what was for them a sentimental journey.

******

As if to celebrate their happiness, Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light, was being observed by the minority Hindu population of the State of Kashmir, when they arrived.

‘This is the happiest festival in the Hindu calendar, devoted to the Goddess Lakshmi,’ Gavin told Helen.

She was entranced by the little, clay oil lamps used by the people to decorate niches, windows, trees and gardens and floated on the waters of the lakes; the tiny lights at night resembling myriads of fireflies. At the end of the festival, Helen bought some sugared sweets carved in the form of animals for the servants’ children and rockets and fireworks and the cook’s wife showed her how to tie the beautiful gold, silk sari Gavin had bought for

her in the bazaar.

Perhaps, because she was wearing this elegant Indian garment, Helen felt the need to honour the Goddess and under cover of the noise of the fireworks, she went down the steps of the houseboat and floated four little lamps on its waters, one each for Gavin, herself, Rosita and their unborn child.

When she looked up, she saw Gavin leaning on the verandah balustrade, watching her. He smiled and coming towards her, opened his arms and drew her to him.

’So, Lady French, or should I say my beautiful Indian princess, because that is who you resemble in that lovely sari, are you, too, saluting the Goddess Lakshmi?’

’I thought I should make a little offering for all of us - you, Rosita and this little one and because of my own happiness, my darling.’

Gavin held her slightly away from him and lifting her hand to his lips, could not fail to notice that she was wearing the diamond ring cut into the shape of entwining hearts -his wedding gift of love - a love she was now convinced was hers alone. Helen looked into his eyes, dark with deep emotion and knew there was no need for any explanation, especially when he said, ‘You know I have always adored you and when I thought I was losing you, I nearly went mad. Now you are mine and I will never let you escape again,’ and as if to reinforce his promise, he held her closer in his arms and kissed her tenderly.

No matter what the future held for them, Helen knew that she would never forget their belated honeymoon In Kashmir. They had spent their days leisurely, enjoying the breathtaking scenery of this Oriental Switzerland, visiting all the places of interest and when, at the end of the day the servants had left the houseboat, Gavin carried Helen to their bedroom and showed her again and again how much he loved her.

‘I love you, my little sweetheart. How I love you!’ he had cried last night when their lovemaking had carried them both to new peaks of ecstasy.

It was dawn when she awoke and saw Gavin standing at the window, his tall, athletic body silhouetted against the morning light. She lay for a while admiring his masculine beauty which, since they now shared a bed, she had ample opportunity to do, because her husband never wore clothes in the privacy of their bedroom. Once again. Helen was reminded of Michelangelo’s ‘David’. Gavin turned and saw his lovely wife watching him through half-closed eyes.

‘Are you awake, darling? Come and see this beautiful sunrise. Kashmir is putting on such a display, determined we will never forget her.’

Helen climbed out of bed and into Gavin’s enveloping arms as he pulled the thick rezai off the bed and wrapped it around their naked bodies, because there was a distinct chill in the morning air.

Helen saw the panorama that was entrancing Gavin and which she remembered so well from her first, unhappy visit to Kashmir - Lake Dal set alight by the rising sun until her waters resembled burnished gold, a kingfisher perched on a water lily nearby, looking for his fishy breakfast, little fishing boats in the distance casting their nets, encircled by eager birds and all around the mighty Himalayas, their snow-capped peaks tinted gold by the

rising sun.

‘I shall miss this fascinating country, Gavin, despite all its recent upheavals,’ said Helen, unable to hide a note of nostalgia in her voice.

‘I know, little sweetheart, so will I. I told you India will get into your blood. But I promise we will come back one day,’ whispered Gavin burying his face in Helen’s scented hair, his hand stroking her still flat stomach, ‘and we will bring our offspring with us, especially this little one who was conceived in this beautiful land.

‘We’ll show our children the Tag Mahal by moonlight; our lovely valley of Mirapore where their father was Resident and their mother a famous doctor and last, but not least, this beautiful Vale of Kashmir where a jealous husband first made savage love to his beautiful wife,’ said Gavin huskily, turning her in his arms to face him and kissing her hungrily.

‘But he brought her back again to this lovely valley to fill her heart with his love, something she has always desired,’ whispered Helen and sighed with happiness as Gavin lifted her and carried her back to their bed.

END