In the Heart of Darkness

She spoke little, the noblewoman—properly, especially for a wife so much younger than her husband—but her few words were very kind. The innkeeper and his family were quite taken by her. The nobleman, for all his cordiality and good manners, frightened them a bit. He had that pale, western look to his features. That Malwa look. (They did not think he was Malwa himself, but—high in their ranks. And from western India, for certain. That cruel, pitiless west.)

But his wife—no, she was no Malwa. No western Indian. She was as small as a Bengali, and even darker. Keralan, perhaps, or Cholan. Whatever. One of them, in some sense. Bengalis, of course, were not Dravidians, as she obviously was. More of the ancient Vedic blood flowed in their veins than in the peoples of the southern Deccan. But not all that much more; and they, too, had felt the lash of purity.

The next morning, after the rich nobleman and his retinue departed, the innkeeper told his family they would close the inn for a few days. They had not been able to afford a vacation for years. They would do so now, after bathing in the sacred Ganges.

The innkeeper and his wife remembered the few days which followed as a time of rare and blessed rest from toil. Their brood of children remembered it as the happiest days of their happy childhood.

Happy, too, was the innkeeper and his wife, after their return. When their neighbors told them, hushed and fearful, of the soldiers who had terrorized the village the day before. Shouting at folk—even beating them. Demanding to know if anyone had seen a young, dark-skinned woman accompanied by Kushan soldiers.

Something stirred, vaguely, in the innkeeper's mind. But he pushed it down resolutely.

None of his business. He had not been here to answer any questions, after all. And he certainly had no intention of looking for the authorities.

So, in the end, Nanda Lal would fail again.

Partly, because he continued to make assumptions even when he thought he wasn't. He assumed, without thinking about it, that a fleeing princess and her soldiers would seek the fastest way out of the Malwa empire. So he sent a host of soldiers scouring north India in all directions, looking for a young woman and Kushans on horseback.

Neither a pious innkeeper on vacation, nor a young officer hiding his humiliation, nor any of the other folk who might have guided the Malwa to Shakuntala, made the connection.

And the one man who could, and did, kept silent.

When Malwa soldiers rousted the stablekeeper in Kausambi, and questioned him, he said nothing. The soldiers did not question him for very long. They were bored and inattentive, having already visited five stables in the great city that morning, and with more to come. So the stablekeeper was able to satisfy them soon enough.

No, he had not seen any young noblewoman—or soldiers—leaving on horseback.

He could not tell the difference between Kushans and any other steppe barbarians, anyway. The savages all looked alike to him.

The soldiers, peasants from the Gangetic plain, smiled. Nodded.

He had seen nothing. Heard nothing. Knew nothing.

The soldiers, satisfied, went on their way.

The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.

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Framed

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Chapter 20

On his way through the Panther Gate, just as he had promised Lord Jivita, Rana Sanga disciplined the soldiers who had allowed Belisarius to leave the city. "Give them lashes," Jivita had demanded, specifying the plural.

Sanga's word, as always, was good.

Two lashes, each. From his own quirt, wielded by Rajputana's mightiest hand. It is conceivable that a fly might have been slain by those strokes. It is conceivable.

Once he and his cavalry unit were outside the walls of the capital, Sanga conferred with his lieutenants and his chief Pathan tracker as they rode westward. The conference was very brief, since the fundamental problem of their pursuit was obvious to anyone who even glanced at the countryside.

The Gangetic plain, after a week of heavy rainfall, was a sea of mud. Any tracks—tracks even a day old, much less eight—had been obliterated. The only portion of the plain which was reasonably dry was the road itself. A good road, the road to Mathura, but the fact brought no comfort to the Rajputs. Many fine things have been said about stone-paved roads, but none of them has ever been said by Pathan trackers.

"No horse even leave tracks this fucking idiot stone," groused the Pathan. "No man on his foot."

Sanga nodded. "I know. We will not be able to track him until we reach Rajputana. Not this time of year."