A Christmas Garland Page 7

  “I can do that,” the man said quietly. “I will make you one. Come back in a few days. I have many small pieces of wood. And red paint. It will not cost much.”

  “Thank you,” Narraway replied. “I’d like that very much. My name’s Lieutenant Narraway. I’ll be back.”

  As he walked past the next open door he heard a woman inside, singing. Her voice was soft and filled with music. He had no idea who she was, but she was singing to someone she loved, of that he was certain. Probably it was a child. Reluctantly he moved on, out of earshot, toward the officers’ mess.

  At first Narraway was almost relieved not to see Latimer, and he had half turned to go when he noticed Strafford in a corner, and then Latimer beside him. He pulled his tunic a little straighter and squared his shoulders, then walked across the floor, threading between the tables and chairs and rickety stools, until he stood to attention in front of Latimer.

  “Sir.”

  Latimer turned toward him as if he had been expecting this moment, and not looking forward to it any more than Narraway himself.

  “Are you ready, Lieutenant?” he asked. His face was pale and tired. He nursed a glass of whisky in his hand as if it could feel his touch, his fingers caressing it.

  “Yes, sir,” Narraway replied. They both knew it was a lie, but it was the answer expected of him.

  “You’ve spoken with Tallis?” Latimer pursued.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any help?”

  “Not much.”

  Latimer smiled; for a moment it softened the lines in his face. “Like him?”

  Narraway was not prepared for the question. “Ah … yes, sir. I couldn’t help it. Would have preferred not to.”

  “If you’d said ‘no,’ I wouldn’t have believed you.” Latimer sighed. “One thing you’ll have to learn if you’re going to make it in the army, Narraway. Know when to lie to your superiors and when not to. Sometimes we know the truth, but we don’t want to hear it.”

  “Sorry, sir. I didn’t know this was one of those moments.”

  “It wasn’t. Your judgment is quite right. He’s a likeable man. We need the kind of humor he brings, and the unreason, the ability to hope when it makes no sense. I wish to hell it had been anybody else but him. You can’t save him, but for God’s sake, make it look as if you’re trying.”

  “Yes, sir.” Narraway fell silent. He felt stupid, but there was nothing else to add.

  “Busby’ll give you a hard time. Expect it, and don’t lose your temper, no matter what he says. He lost a lifelong friend in that ambush. He’d served with Tierney a long time too. That’s the fellow who lost a leg.”

  “Yes, sir, I know. I spoke to him. A good man,” Narraway replied.

  “Did you?” Latimer looked slightly surprised. “Tell you anything useful?”

  “No, sir. Just thought I should speak to him.”

  “Well, you’d better go and get a decent night’s sleep—or as decent as you can.”

  “Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”

  Latimer lifted a hand in a slight salute. “Good night, Lieutenant Narraway.” Then: “Did you make any sense of it yet?” he asked suddenly.

  Narraway felt the coldness deep inside him. “No, sir, but I will.”

  “That was the lie I wanted to hear,” Latimer said with a faint smile.

  NARRAWAY COULD NOT SLEEP. HE LAY ON HIS COT. IT WAS comfortable enough, better than many places where he had slept perfectly well over the last year, but restfulness eluded him. He turned one way, then the other, sometimes with his eyes closed, sometimes staring up at the ceiling, which was pale from the starlight through the window. Tallis’s face came back to his mind, regardless of all his efforts to banish it away. This was an inescapable burden, suffocating him.

  It was not only Narraway’s career at stake, it was the whole regiment’s honor, its belief in justice as an abstract, a perfect and beautiful thing that every man strove for. Except that that was nonsense. Some men strove for it. Many merely used the word as an excuse.

  Narraway had not been among the soldiers who had relieved Cawnpore after the siege. He had been farther north. But he had heard about it. What the soldiers arriving had seen had driven them almost out of their senses. The vengeance had been appalling. No one had bothered with justice then.

  Had he not seen the emotion in the men, the stunned look in their eyes, the sudden clumsiness in movement, as if they lacked coordination? The horror and the grief were too enormous to recover from in just a few short months. Maybe those men would never again be quite the same men as they had been before.

  Right now, faced with the immediate decision of what to say at the trial in a matter of hours, Narraway dared not think about his future, but that time would come. He could not win; it was only the measure of his loss that counted. Some would judge him for trying at all, even though the soldier in them would know he was obeying an order he could not refuse. Reason would defend him, but emotion would not.

  Again and again, he came back to reason. He could see very easily why Latimer needed to understand. It was not simply a matter of morale. Without understanding, they would commit the same errors over and over again in the future. For all he knew, they might be committing them right now.

  What was he misreading? Was there something in the puzzle that did not belong? He must have some plan before morning.

  He went over it again in his mind and came up with the same answers. There was no one it could have been, except Tallis. Tallis had sworn his innocence. And no one, not even Busby, could come up with a reason why Tallis should have wanted Dhuleep to escape.

  Reason—that was the missing piece.

  He could not think of anything that would justify letting Dhuleep escape. His hunger to see sense was growing more powerful, the need for an overall intelligence that promised future control.

  He could hear no sound in the night air except his own breathing and the whine of an insect somewhere.

  Then a thought struck him. Perhaps the act made no sense because it was not the result Tallis had intended. What if he’d wanted something quite different? Might he have known that Dhuleep had information about the patrol, and intended to kill him because of it? The original charge against Dhuleep was not serious, so in a few days he might well have been let go anyway. Maybe Tallis hadn’t wanted to risk that? And the plan had just gone wrong when he reached the cell?

  But how would Tallis have known Dhuleep had such information? And why not plan to kill him in some more discreet way—medically, to make it look more or less like a natural death—instead of just barging into the cell?

  Or might Chuttur secretly have been a traitor as well? These days, nobody knew who was on which side. People crossed from one to another. After all, it was a mutiny, not a war with clearly defined lines. So maybe Tallis had been the one to kill Chuttur, but Dhuleep had managed to get away in the process.

  But why would Tallis not mention such things if they were true? Was someone else involved, someone else he could not betray? Were there further traitors he must not warn? Narraway could not forget that Tallis had said he trusted him. Would he spend the rest of his life measuring himself against this one failure? Would he even have the courage to fight his hardest for Tallis, knowing he could only lose? And when it was all over, would he have the courage to watch the hanging, knowing that he had been the one hope Tallis had had?

  Why the hell did Tallis not trust him with the entire truth, and yet believe he would still help, pull off some kind of miracle? They did not even know each other. Narraway had never represented anyone at trial before; he had no reputation for such a thing.

  Maybe it was not Narraway that Tallis trusted, but British law? Then where the devil did he grow up, that he did not know there were miscarriages of justice at home as well?

  A trust in the British? After the atrocities on both sides of the mutiny, that would be absurd. And Tallis had surely seen the worst of all that. He was a medical orderly—no one could tell
him about a horror that he had not already seen.

  Narraway turned over again and pulled the blanket after him. He was cold and tired, and his head was pounding, but he was no nearer sleep.

  Perhaps it was God Tallis believed in. That did not require reason. When circumstances were extreme enough, sometimes that was all there was to believe in. Tallis was a young man. He had chosen a noble path in life: healing others, even when it meant risking his own life. If he had stayed in Britain he could have been comfortable, respected, and safe. So maybe he had a right to expect something of God?

  Was that the way he saw it? God would help him?

  Why? God had not helped the thousands who had been murdered in the mutiny. He had not saved the women and children at the Bibighar well.

  He turned over to the other side, then on to his back, eyes open, watching the starlight on the ceiling.

  What did he believe in himself? What did he trust? That called for a harsh review. He had been brought up to attend church. Most of the men here had. Did he believe in its teachings, its doctrine? Did he even believe in the God the church taught?

  He realized with a sudden chill, as if someone had snatched his blanket away, that he had never really looked far enough into himself to know what he believed. If he had to answer now, tonight, staring at the starlight on the ceiling of his bedroom in this battered and rather shabby house, did he believe in God?

  He certainly did not disbelieve. But he did not believe in the grand and rather distant God of the churches he had been to. If He was a God for everyone, then He must be equally so for the Indian, or the Chinaman, or the African.

  And yes, that God he did believe in. Maybe it was because he needed to. For everything on earth to be pointless, accidental, and without love or purpose was a sterility he would not entertain. It left no room for true laughter, beauty, or even love. It did not allow for hope, for that in man that forgives, nor for that in woman that nurtures endlessly, that will sacrifice to save her children without ever thinking of the cost.

  For what did he trust God, the good parent?

  Mercy? Perhaps at Judgment Day, if such existed, but there was scant evidence of it now.

  Justice? There was scant evidence of that, either. But then, if there were, if good were rewarded with good and evil with evil, would either of them really exist? Would there be anything more than enlightened self-interest? No true virtue, simply a system of barter?

  That was a world so ugly, so barren and eventually hideous, that he thrust away the idea. It was a kind of universal death.

  No justice, then; except what man himself strove to make.

  No biblical promise that he could recall had ever said that justice would come without pain or loss: simply that in the end, it would be worth it.

  Faith? Certainly. But blind faith that did not expect immediate reward, a trust that did not look to be vindicated and explained at every step along the way? Was that what he believed?

  Yes, perhaps it was.

  Could he live up to it? That remained to be seen.

  But a plan was beginning to form in his mind, a way to discover the missing pieces that would make sense of both Tallis’s act then and his silence now. The truth must lie in the characters of Dhuleep and Chuttur themselves; something Tallis knew of them and Latimer did not.

  Gradually he drifted into an uneasy sleep, filled with nightmares that ballooned and faded, sometimes acutely sharp.

  THE TRIAL OF JOHN TALLIS BEGAN THE FOLLOWING MORNING. Only the necessary attendees were present. Latimer had wanted as little attention brought to the details as possible. He sat at the top table with two officers Narraway did not know. Busby was at a small table on one side of the room with his papers spread in front of him, and Narraway was at the other.

  Tallis, in uniform rather than his medical working clothes, sat beside Narraway. They had no suitable handcuffs or chains in which to keep him, but there were armed soldiers at the door, and in the room beyond where various witnesses were waiting. A couple of junior officers appeared to be ushers, and a third sat at a small table off to one side, pen poised to record what was said. How on earth he would keep up with the conversation, Narraway had no idea.

  As soon as the formalities were dealt with, Busby began by calling his first witness. It was clear even from the brisk way in which he spoke, from the neatness of his uniform and the immaculate way his hair was brushed, that he intended to observe the letter of the law.

  Of course, he knew he was going to win. There was no battle, only the pretense of one.

  Grant was called. He came in straight-backed but looking curiously tired. He faced Busby, waiting.

  Busby stood, speaking quietly, as if there were only the two of them in the room.

  “I’m sorry to have to take you through all this again, Corporal Grant,” he said gently. “I’m sure you understand the necessity. We must do justice here, not only to the dead and their families, but also to the living. It must also be seen by others, far beyond this regiment, or Cawnpore itself, that murder will be punished, fairly and justly, and that our actions are not taken out of revenge.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant responded, straightening his shoulders a little more.

  Step by step, Busby led him through the events of the night in question: hearing the alarm, dropping what he was doing, and running toward the prison. He had him describe exactly what he did, what he saw, never dwelling on unnecessary horrors to give Narraway a chance to object that he was playing on emotions rather than facts.

  “Thank you,” Busby said when Grant had come to the end of his description. “Please wait there in case Lieutenant Narraway has anything to ask you.”

  Narraway stood up slowly. He was disgusted to find that he was shaking. It was absurd. He was going to lose. The battle was over before it began.

  He cleared his throat. “Corporal Grant, when I spoke to you yesterday, asking you about this tragedy, you told me that Chuttur Singh was fatally wounded when you found him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant said too quickly. He also was nervous, his body tight under the fabric of his uniform, his shoulders high and rigid. He had liked both Chuttur Singh and Tallis. This was clearly painful for him.

  “We appreciate that there was nothing you could do for him, Corporal,” Narraway said as gently as he could. “You said to Captain Busby that Chuttur Singh told you the prisoner had escaped and that recapturing him was more important than anything else, is that correct?”

  Busby moved impatiently.

  Latimer held up his hand to silence him.

  “Yes, sir,” Grant agreed.

  “He told you to leave him and pursue the prisoner, Dhuleep Singh?” Narraway persisted. “Because he knew the route and times of the patrol?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know how he knew that?”

  Grant looked slightly surprised. “No, sir.”

  “Yet you did not question it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You told me that Chuttur had said someone had come into the prison from outside and attacked him. I asked you if Chuttur Singh had told you who the other man was, and you told me he had not. Is that correct?”

  Grant let his breath go slowly. “Yes, sir. That is correct. I … I don’t think he knew.”

  “It isn’t that he told you, and for some reason or other you are concealing it?” Narraway pressed.

  Busby rose to his feet. “Colonel Latimer, this is—”

  Latimer held up his hand. “Perfectly fair, Captain. Thank you, Lieutenant Narraway. We have established that Chuttur Singh did not tell Corporal Grant who attacked him, and we may safely presume it was because he did not know. Have you anything further, Lieutenant, perhaps regarding Dhuleep Singh’s knowledge of the patrol?”

  “Not at this time, thank you, sir.” Narraway sat down with relief washing over him, his knees feeling like water.

  Busby then called Attwood, who said much the same as Grant had. However, his words were not so ident
ical as to make it seem as if they had conferred. Narraway could think of nothing to contest, and he did not want to risk making a mistake that could cost him credibility.

  Finally Busby called Peterson, who added nothing of value, except in his careful and clearly honest description of how he had left the prison block and gone searching for Dhuleep Singh. It was he who had found faint traces of blood showing the path of escape. Busby obtained all the details from him, making the scene seem real and urgent, terribly familiar to those listening. It was Peterson who had gone in the direction of the Bibighar Gardens and the well.

  “Did you search the Bibighar building for this man?” Busby asked.

  Peterson was white-faced. “Yes, sir. He wasn’t there.” He was shaking very slightly.

  “You looked inside the house?” Busby persisted. “You didn’t avoid it … because …”

  Narraway knew what Busby was doing, and he could not bear it. He stood up, facing Colonel Latimer.

  “Sir, Captain Busby is suggesting that Private Peterson failed in his duty because of the horror of what happened there, and possibly out of his own personal grief. Private Peterson has told the Court that he looked. He is an honorable man and a good soldier. He is not charged with anything, and should not have his courage or his honesty brought into question here.”

  There was a murmur of approval from the man to Latimer’s right, and both the men acting as ushers nodded.

  “Thank you.” Latimer nodded at Narraway. “Captain Busby, we are satisfied that Private Peterson has answered your question. No one found Dhuleep Singh, as is only too evident to all of us. If you have nothing further to ask him, then when Lieutenant Narraway has spoken, we will adjourn for luncheon.”

  Busby sat down, his face faintly flushed.

  “Thank you, sir,” Narraway acknowledged. “I think what happened after the alarm was sounded is very clear. I have nothing useful to ask Private Peterson.”

  Latimer nodded, his face expressionless.

  “We are adjourned until two o’clock,” he told them.