A Christmas Garland Read online

  “Yes, sir,” the man said obediently. “You’ll pardon me, but may I have your sidearm, sir? No weapons allowed when you’re with the prisoner.”

  Narraway remembered with a chill that the prisoner who escaped had murdered the guard with the guard’s own weapon. He handed over his revolver without demur.

  A moment later he was inside the cell, standing face-to-face with John Tallis. The man was tall, a little hunched over; naturally lean, but it seemed the low rations and the exhaustion from first the long, burning summer under siege, and now imprisonment, had left him gaunt. He still wore his army uniform, but the trousers bagged on him. The tunic hung hollow over his chest and pulled a little crookedly at the shoulders. His thick, black hair was lank and his blue eyes startling against the sun-weathered skin of his face. He might have been any age, but Narraway knew he was thirty.

  Narraway introduced himself. “I’m going to defend you at your trial,” he explained. “I need to talk to you because I have no idea what to say. I know your regimental history because it’s a matter of record. Everyone agrees you were one of the best medical orderlies they’ve ever known.”

  He saw Tallis lift his chin a little, his mouth twisting into a self-mocking smile. His teeth were white and perfect. “That’ll come in useful if I’m ever charged with incompetence,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t help now.”

  Narraway struggled for something to ask that might offer any mitigation. What on earth did Latimer think he could do? There was no defense! He was going to be completely useless.

  “Tell me what happened,” Narraway said aloud. “Exactly. Give me all the details you can remember. Go back as far as you need in order to make some sense of it.”

  Tallis looked incredulous. “Sense? When did you get here, yesterday? There isn’t any sense. It’s a colossal pileup of one idiocy after another. Bullets greased with pig fat, cow fat. It’s probably bloody mutton anyway! Nobody’s listening to anyone. People are just settling old scores, or shooting scared at anything that moves.”

  “You must have had some reason for helping Dhuleep,” Narraway said desperately. “Give me something, anything at all to say on your behalf.”

  Tallis’s eyes opened wider. A look of terror was naked in their blue depths for a moment; then he concealed it. He swallowed convulsively, his throat so tight he all but choked. “I didn’t do it,” he answered. “And I haven’t any idea who did.”

  Narraway was at a total loss. Tallis was not justifying himself, not making excuses, not blaming anyone else. He was just giving a sheer, blank denial.

  “But there was no one else who could have,” Narraway said as calmly as he could manage. “Everyone else’s whereabouts are accounted for, one way or another.”

  “Then someone is lying, or got it wrong,” Tallis answered. “I did not kill Chuttur Singh or let Dhuleep Singh go. You have to prove that.”

  “I’ve got less than two days,” Narraway protested. “Captain Busby’s already been through all the details of the night, and Major Strafford. There was no one else who could’ve done it.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Tallis said simply. He gave a shrug of his bony shoulders. “I’m a medical orderly. I only kill people by accident, never on purpose.”

  Narraway was startled, angry; then suddenly he saw the black humor in Tallis’s eyes. In that instant he felt a wave of compassion for the man’s courage. In other circumstances, a thousand miles from here, he could have liked him. He licked his dry lips. “Where were you when Chuttur Singh was murdered?” he asked.

  Tallis thought for a moment. “If it happened when they say it must have happened, I was in the storeroom, alone. I was counting what supplies we had, and going over what we could possibly get ahold of if any kind of relief supplies came in, and considering what we could make for ourselves with things from the bazaar,” he replied. “If I could prove it, I would have already. It’s a pretty good mess in there. We’ve been making do for a long time. I’m just about out of inventions.”

  “Did you not make lists of anything, inventory, notes about what to get?” Narraway struggled to think of something that could help support Tallis’s claim.

  “Certainly,” Tallis replied, “but I can’t prove when I wrote them. I could have done it anytime in the previous twenty-four hours. Believe me, I count those damn things in my sleep, hoping I’ve got it wrong and that we have more supplies left than I thought. I sometimes even get up in the night and count again, hoping items have got together and bred—like bedbugs.”

  Narraway ignored the analogy. “Did you know Chuttur Singh?” he asked.

  Tallis looked away, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “Yes. He was a good man. Silly sense of humor. Always coming up with crazy jokes that weren’t funny. But he made me laugh, just because he laughed.”

  That sounded so normal to Narraway; it was absurd that they should now be talking about murder, thinking about an execution. It was a nightmare he must wake up from. He used to know how to do that, when he was a boy—make himself wake up. “And Dhuleep?” he asked.

  “Different altogether,” Tallis replied, watching Narraway closely. “Quiet. Never knew what he was thinking. He used to recite poetry to himself. At least I think it was poetry. It could have been a string of curses, or a recipe for curry, for all I know. Or a letter to his grandmother.” He blinked. “If they hang me, will you write a letter to my grandmother? Tell her I died bravely? Even if I don’t?”

  Narraway drew in his breath to remonstrate with him, tell him not to be flippant or not to give up hope, but the words slipped through his mind and were all useless. They were going to hang Tallis in less than a week, get the whole matter dealt with and out of mind before Christmas, for everybody’s sake—everybody except Tallis and his family back in England, proud of him.

  “If it should prove necessary, and you give me an address, of course I will,” he said instead, as if it were the natural answer. But it was also of no help at all.

  Narraway knew Latimer was looking for more than Tallis’s surrender. He needed some answers that allowed the men to have hope, which revealed a spark of sanity amid the senselessness and the fear.

  “Somebody did kill the man, and you’re the only one unaccounted for,” he pointed out sharply. “Everyone else was busy and in someone else’s sight. Look, if you had a reason for killing him, if you know something about him, tell me.” He started to say that for Tallis’s own sake he should explain the circumstances, but stopped abruptly. Whatever Tallis said, it would make no difference at all when it came to his sentence, and they both knew it. If he pretended that wasn’t the case, Tallis would think him a liar or a fool, and it would break the spiderweb-thin thread of connection between them.

  He began again. “The regiment needs to know the truth. There’s chaos and death everywhere. We need at least to believe in ourselves.”

  Tallis closed his bright blue eyes. “My God, you’re young! What—nineteen? This time last year you were sitting for exams behind some neat, wooden school desk, waiting for the bell to ring and tell you time’s up.”

  “Twenty,” Narraway snapped, feeling the color burn up his face. “And I—” He stopped short, stung by shame at the absurdity of getting defensive about his age and experience. Tallis was facing trial for his life, and he had been offered nothing better than the most junior lieutenant to defend him.

  Narraway lowered his voice and kept it steady. “Please, for the sake of the regiment, the men you know and who’ve trusted you—help them make sense of this. Give them a reason, whatever it was. Why did you want to rescue Dhuleep? What did you think he was going to do? If you didn’t mean to betray the patrol, or get Chuttur killed, what went wrong? If someone is lying, who? And why?”

  Tallis stared at him, started to speak, then stopped again.

  “Are you protecting someone else?” Narraway asked sharply. “Is this some debt of honor you owe?”

  Tallis was c
ompletely stunned. No denial in words could have carried such complete conviction as his silence.

  “Debt of honor?” he finally said, incredulously; then he started to laugh, quietly but with a jarring, hysterical note underneath it.

  Narraway felt ridiculous and painfully helpless. He had expected anger, despair, self-pity, but not this.

  Then Tallis stopped laughing as suddenly as he had begun.

  “I did not murder Chuttur Singh to pay a debt of honor,” he said quietly, almost mildly. “I’m a medical orderly who just happens to be wearing a soldier’s uniform. I save lives—any lives. I’d treat a sick dog if I had one. Any debt of honor I owe is to medicine.”

  Narraway could think of nothing to say. He did not even know where to begin.

  “For God’s sake, man, think!” he said desperately. “Who was friendly with Dhuleep? Who might have owed him something, or sympathized with him? Is it possible someone had a … a debt to cancel, or a feud with anyone who was part of the patrol that was wiped out? If it wasn’t you, then it has to have been someone else.”

  Tallis’s brilliant blue eyes opened wide. “Is that why they’re saying I did it? Because I owed someone, or hated someone on the patrol? I’m a medical orderly. I don’t even know who was on the damn patrol! I’m one of the few men in the station who never has time to gamble or run up any debts. Half of our medical staff was killed in the siege.”

  “Then think of anything you’ve heard, gossip, tales,” Narraway urged him. “We’ve no time.”

  “I’ve no time,” Tallis corrected him. “The regiment needs this incident put to bed as quickly as can be made to look decent. I can’t blame them for that.” He pulled his lips tight. “Happy Christmas, Lieutenant.”

  NARRAWAY SLEPT BADLY. SUCH DREAMS AS HE HAD WERE tangled and filled with a sense of hopelessness. He woke fighting against the sheets as if they were binding him, keeping him from escape. He was gasping for breath, in spite of the fact that there was nothing over his face. Again and again he saw Tallis’s eyes. Was he innocent? Could this be a monstrous mistake? Did the authorities so desperately need to find the traitor, and make everyone believe justice had been done, that actual justice was the price? What other answer could there be? It seemed that no one else had had the opportunity to kill Chuttur Singh, so by default it had to have been Tallis. But what was his motive? What was Narraway missing that would make sense of it?

  He was so tired, his head pounded and his eyes felt full of grit.

  HE ROSE EARLY, WASHED, SHAVED, AND DRESSED BEFORE going to the mess and taking a brief breakfast. He liked the fruit they’d had in the summer—mangoes, bananas, and guavas—but there was none left now. He acknowledged other officers but sat alone so he could avoid conversation. He needed to think.

  Latimer had given him one day to create some kind of defense for Tallis. An appeal for mercy was pointless. The only answer to a verdict of guilty was execution. Soldiers were killed all the time. Cawnpore was steeped in blood. Death was cheap. One more was barely even noticeable.

  After he had eaten, he went outside and walked along the dusty roadway. The low bungalow houses of the officers were ramshackle now: three or four rooms set in extended areas that in better times would have been gardens. He did not hear the silent footsteps behind him and only became aware of Captain Busby when the man spoke, almost at his elbow.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” Busby said briskly, not disguising the fact that he had obviously sought Narraway out intentionally. “Good idea to get away from the barracks a bit. Glad you thought of it.”

  “Good morning, sir,” Narraway replied tersely, wondering what Busby wanted with him. He was not ready to discuss strategy yet, or accept any instruction, for that matter.

  They came to a crossroads. Busby moved closer, obliging Narraway to accept the tacit guidance and turn along the wider road into the town.

  The first building they passed was the library, looking dusty and deserted, its doors closed. There were two women standing on the steps with books in their hands, chatting to each other then glancing up the street toward the tearooms and the bazaar.

  A couple of men came down from the breakfast club next to the library and nodded at the women, touching their hats courteously. They looked serious, avoiding anything more than the minimum acknowledgment of Busby and Narraway.

  The billiard rooms were deserted this early in the day, as was the Freemasons Lodge with its handsome entrance. Narraway had intended to go toward the river. He did not want to face the noise and the constant interruptions of the bazaar, with pleas to buy this or that, but Busby was intent on conversation and he could not escape.

  “Doesn’t look the same as it used to,” Busby said ruefully as they passed the doors of the newsrooms. “Everyone’s trying, of course, but the memories of the siege are all over the place, and the fear that it will happen again lingers. Every place you look at makes you think of someone who’s gone. Thank God it’s Christmas soon. Remind us who we are, what we believe in.” Busby was talking casually, but his voice was edged with tension. He was a fraction taller than Narraway and perhaps seven or eight years older. His fair skin was burned red-brown by the Indian sun, and he walked with a very slight limp, as if from an old wound. There was a thin scar on the side of his left cheek, hardly noticeable.

  “Yes, sir,” Narraway agreed. “I’ve seen some of the children making garlands of colored paper,” he added as they passed the theater, where in better times the younger men had performed all kinds of music and comedies for the general entertainment. It was silent now.

  Busby smiled. “We must protect the men. They have a right to expect that of us. We bring them here, thousands of miles away from everything they knew and loved, and expect their total loyalty. We receive it, and sometimes I think we take it too lightly. We owe it to them, especially the wives of those killed on the patrol, to see this trial to a swift end.” He glanced at Narraway and then back at the rutted road they were walking along. “I hope you can see that.” He said it with a lift in his voice, as if it were, at least in part, a question.

  He outranked Narraway, but in the matter of the trial of John Tallis, rank should mean nothing.

  “As rapidly as justice allows, sir,” Narraway agreed.

  “What witnesses do you propose to call?” Busby asked rather briskly.

  “I don’t know,” Narraway admitted. “I only got the case yesterday evening, and I’ve never represented anyone on trial before.”

  “For heaven’s sake, you’re an officer, man!” Busby said dismissively. “I’m not a lawyer either. We’re after the truth, not tricks of the law. A loyal Sikh officer has been cut to pieces, and ten of our own men were ambushed out there.” He waved his arm in a general southerly direction. “Nine of them are dead. We’ve got widows, at least half a dozen more fatherless children. Tallis is responsible for that. The legality of it is just for the record’s sake; don’t harrow up everyone’s emotions and open old wounds by asking a lot of unnecessary questions.”

  Narraway did not answer. There was no point in telling Busby that the colonel had asked him to do more than just tidy it away. Latimer wanted answers, wanted to understand what had gone so terribly wrong.

  They walked a few paces in silence. A man pushing a cart of vegetables veered and jolted over a hole ahead of them. Two women—probably officers’ wives, from the cut of their clothes—passed on the opposite side, inclining their heads slightly.

  “I’m not sure if you are the right man for this,” Busby went on, now staring straight ahead. “We might have been better off with someone who’d actually been through the siege and understood the suffering, the deeper issues.”

  “I think Colonel Latimer chose me precisely because I hadn’t been through it,” Narraway answered. “He wants this to be fair. If I’d been here through the siege, I’d have loyalties to certain men more than others, perhaps men to whom I owed my life. I might not favor them in any way, but people couldn’t be sure of it, of my mo
tivations.”

  Busby was quiet. They passed a small nondenominational church on the other side of the street. The post office was just ahead of them. They both looked battered, scarred by shells that had exploded too close. A shop nearby was darkened by the stains of an old fire, spreading out like the shadow of a hand.

  “I don’t know who you’re going to call,” Busby said suddenly. “No one else could have done it, you know. Don’t go trying to raise doubt as to the honor of decent men. Apart from the fact that you won’t get Tallis off—and by God, neither should you—you certainly won’t do yourself any favors. If you want to make a career in the army, you’ll understand loyalty.” His voice took on a sudden, intense emotion. “That’s what it’s all about—courage under fire, steadfastness, and loyalty. You’re no damn use to man or beast if your own men don’t know that, come hell or high water, they can trust you.”

  He glanced sideways at Narraway, his eyes sharp. Then, after a moment’s penetrating stare, he looked ahead again. “I assume you know that already, and I don’t have to tell you? Make a good job of this and the whole regiment will respect you. Filthy responsibility, I know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Narraway agreed, trying to put his words carefully. “My aim is to defend Tallis so that no one afterward—history, if you like—can say he wasn’t dealt with fairly. I hope that won’t take time, and I sincerely hope it won’t necessitate my calling anyone as witness to an event that distresses them more than is unavoidable. But haste now may lead to grief; to dishonor that will later damage the regiment, and even the reputation of the Indian army in the future.”

  Busby stopped abruptly and swung around to face Narraway. “I think I underestimated you, Lieutenant. You’re going to be a damn nuisance, aren’t you? But if you think you can teach me the best way to handle this and earn the regiment’s loyalty and respect, you are profoundly mistaken. Which I will soon show you.”