Beyond Simla - one
Oct. 4th, 2009 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismeninHello, my loves! Here is the first part of my next story, called 'Beyond Simla's Hills'.
It is an AR of course, because India contained no state called Ranjipore. I'm on part 14, now, and enjoying it a lot. I hope you do, too. Hugs
Grateful thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladysunrope for her excellent beta. Hugs.
Part - One
Udai Chand lay sick to death
in his hold by Gungra Hill.
All night they heard the death-gongs ring
for the soul of the dying Rajput King;
All night beat up from the Women's Wing
a cry that they could not still…
Rudyard Kipling - The Last Suttee
1864. Ranjipore, India.
Prince Udom Abhjah Bahadur Singh - Yuvaraja, or Crown Prince of Ranjipore - stood to attention beside his father's death bed, waiting for the very moment of the last breath, when the king would be reverently taken from the silken sheets, and laid upon the floor, to die in the straw, as his father's fathers had done for generations before him. To die as he was born, with no possessions but the light cotton shirt on his back.
He could hear the shrieks from the women in the zenana, but Udom knew his mother, a Boondi princess after all, had more dignity than to scream like a village goat-wife at such a time. He knew that she was, even now, dressing in her best silks, and choosing her finest jewels, preparing to die upon the funeral pyre, as her mother's mothers had, for generations before her, time out of mind.
So it would be, his uncle had told him earlier, as he prepared the boy for the dying-room, when it came to his turn to go into the unknown. But Udom Singh hoped that event would be a long time ahead.
As the gongs emitted their sonorous tones, Udom Singh whispered to his uncle again, asking if his father had thought the same thing - that death was a remote stranger, not to be encountered by him for many, many years. For his father was twenty six years old - cut down in his prime by a rogue tiger, during the morning hunt. His broken, slashed body had been brought back only a few hours before by his tearful servants, for Udom's father was a good and kindly ruler, and much beloved by all.
Udom sighed as his uncle told him that this - death - was one thing all men had in common. Udom did not find the thought comforting. He had been bereft, in one cruel slash of a tiger's razor sharp claws, of both his mother and his father. For it was unthinkable that Udai Singh's wife, Aditi - mother of gods - would allow her lord to travel to heaven alone.
And, his uncle had reminded him, under the cover of the clashing gongs, the British Army Colonels who had orders from the Government in London to stop such practises as suttee - the burning of widows on their husband's funeral pyre - were not near enough to prevent her leaping upon the fire to burn with her lord. Udai Singh's death was unexpected. There were no British of any consequence - either army or civilian - in the palace, except for a few mostly elderly souls who were totally devoted to his parents.
Udom bowed his head as his father was lowered onto the straw. He heard the last gasping breath, and stared at all the men present as they knelt at his feet, naming him the new Maharajah of Ranjipore, reciting his titles, and proclaiming their loyalty to him.
"You may rise, my good friends," he said, quietly as his uncle took his arm to lead him to say good-bye to his mother.
He was only nine years old, and could not keep his bottom lip from wobbling slightly, as he bade farewell to his father, but he mastered it.
His uncle left him at the zenana gates, where the women's wailing continued to be heard, now louder and higher. The eunuchs took the king inside.
Less than two hours later, Udom realised that he was an orphan.
***
Twenty years later. London, England.
The Earl of Stanforth sat behind his desk, glaring angrily at his son, seated uncomfortably on the other side of it. Stanforth had deliberately placed his son apart from him. The desk had proved a useful barrier. That was why he had chosen the office for this interview. He had never understood his son, and he was not about to start now, he thought, fiddling with his cigar clippers.
The earl lit up a cigar and puffed it in Elijah's direction, before he spoke. His tone was clipped and uncompromising. "I have promised your mother, Elijah, that you shall go. Good Lord, boy - the scandal, should the news get out!"
The earl re-lit his cigar, which had gone out despite his efforts, and turned his blue lapidiary gaze once more on the young man perched upon the edge of his chair.
"You understand why I am sending you, of course?" Elijah's father asked, not meeting his son's eyes.
"Yes, sir," came the soft answer.
Stanforth slapped his free hand down hard upon the desk. "That sort of thing is very well at Eton, or even at Oxford - one expects it in those places. But when one goes into the wider world, one must behave in a manner suitable to one's rank and station. One marries, and has children, and leaves all one's youthful indiscretions behind. One is not found, by one's father's valet, in flagrante with a tradesman however handsome or desirable that tradesman may be. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"The fact is that, at twenty seven, you have not married, nor have you - if I understand her correctly - even so much as glanced in the direction of the bevy of undoubted beauties your dear mother has presented to you, over the years, as suitable brides, and this revelation makes me understand your...er...inclinations a little better. But I cannot have it, Elijah. To be seen to scorn the company of women, and consort only with that gang of hooligans you call friends, and whom I can only stigmatise as Hell-Rakes.... No, you must go. You will not choose to disobey with me in this, will you?"
"No, sir."
"Yes, you must go - your mother expects it of you, she will have told you that. Very well. You leave on Thursday. Your passage has been booked on the Queen of Lahore. You have four days to get your things ready. Send for my agent, Bentham, for the details."
"I am sure India will prove the making of you. I shall wish you bon voyage, now, as I leave for Staperley, to stay with Lord Penworth, early in the morning. The races, y'know. So this is good-bye, then."
"Good-bye, sir," Elijah responded, as he quietly left the room.
He stepped lightly up the wide staircase of the house in Berkeley Square, and went immediately to his own rooms, where he would have peace and quiet. The interview he had suffered - it was the only word to describe it - with his mother, earlier, was still fresh in his mind. She had wept. She had spoken of the disgrace should his behaviour become common knowledge. She had begged him to go to India, where he would, she had said, be safe.
But not one word had she uttered as to what might be his feelings upon the matter - how he would feel being parcelled off abroad as were so many embarrassing and difficult sons - if one had the money to do so. He knew his behaviour had been outside the pale, and he must be disposed of - quietly, discreetly - lest it happen again.
His lover, Giles, was not the son of a tradesman, as his father had suggested, but the son of a merchant banker, well known and respected in the city. It was a shame, Elijah thought, that mutual lust had overcome them in the shrubbery, for he might have known that they would be discovered. Fortunately his father's man, Whimple, was loyal to his master's house, and had sworn never to divulge what he had seen.
Elijah was fond of Giles, but he did not love him. He would not be sorry to part company with him - he reminded him too much of the shock of discovery, and the look of disgust in Whimple's eyes when he found them, lying there.
India it must be.
The Viceroy of India was his uncle - his mother's brother. Uncle Hubert would find him a place there, where he could prove himself of use, she had said, weeping all down the bodice of her rose-coloured watered silk afternoon gown.
After Elijah had been disrobed, he dismissed his valet, as well as thoughts of his unhelpful parents, and flung himself, in despair, upon the bed.
He would die in India - dirty, heathen place as it was! Well, that would teach them! He laughed suddenly at the childish thought. He would make the best of it, as he always did. Only time would tell if his first fears had proved correct.
***
The voyage had seemed long - damn it! Elijah thought; it had been long. The accommodations allotted to him on the first class deck had been spacious and comfortable, but most of his fellow passengers had either been bright young girls, going to India in the hope of finding rich young men, who were desperate to marry a girl whom they could actually introduce to their mothers; or slightly older women, with children, going out to live with their husbands, in the heat of a country they had heard so much about in glowing letters from their spouses.
There had been few men with whom he wished to converse. The only likely candidate had been a handsome young lieutenant, who had made a promising start, but after only a few days had thrown out such heavy hints that he wanted more than conversation over tea and cucumber sandwiches, that Elijah withdrew abruptly from the acquaintance.
If he was going to India to avoid this sort of thing, it would not do for him to be found in flagrante again.
***
The tugs drew the ship into the Bombay Dock, as scheduled, at a little past nine on a bright Tuesday morning in August.
Elijah allowed the women and families to disembark first, and then watched carefully - until he saw the back of the fair lieutenant vanish into the distance - before he thanked the captain for a pleasant voyage, and walked slowly down the companion-way to where his valet was standing next to an enormous pile of luggage.
The heat, even at that early hour, was stifling, but Elijah was not bothered by it. He enjoyed the hot weather. Even in Egypt, the year before, he had not been uncomfortable.
Elijah stared at the pile of crocodile-skin cases. "Are you certain, Boyd, that we need all this...this..." Elijah waved a hand ineffectually at the mountain.
Billy Boyd allowed himself a grin. "Oh, aye, my lord. I consulted several of my colleagues about it - about Indian customs. Every item in yon cases guaranteed to be used during our stay, here, and more can be ordered as needed."
Elijah nodded absently, and looked about him. Uncle Hubert was to have sent a carriage for him, but no-one appeared to be waiting - not in that area, any way.
He knew the Viceroy's house was only a few minutes from the dock, so he asked Boyd to summon porters, and, several minutes later, six dilapidated rickshaws were wending their way through the Bombay streets, Elijah sitting in the front vehicle, enthroned, as Boyd had commented, like a Maharajah on a cushion of silk.
Elijah allowed Billy Boyd an uncommon degree of licence, but, with interested ears flapping all about them, he quelled the man's exuberance with a frown, and looked about him.
The first thing, apart from the heat, that Elijah noticed, was the smell. The hot air was redolent with spices, and something slightly more earthy that Elijah did not much care to identify.
He could not imagine his uncle living in such an atmosphere, but in a very little while the rickshaws had left the bustle and dirt of the main streets, and were headed down a broad, leafy avenue that could, apart from the heat, be set anywhere in England, and where the flowering trees gave off a heady scent.
The Viceroy's Palace was enormous - far larger than Elijah's parent's home in Berkeley Square. A huge barrack of a building, similar in style to Buckingham Palace, and nearly half as large, Elijah thought, scanning the huge facade.
Elijah remembered that his mother had said that Uncle Hubert had had it built to his own specifications, and knowing Hubert only too well, Elijah could understand it. He was a bluff man, amiable enough, but pompous, and eminently certain of his own superiority to other men. Elijah fervently hoped that he would not annoy his uncle, and that his father had not divulged to his brother-in-law the real reason he was being exiled here, far away from the life he had been so used to leading in London.
His hope was in vain. Ushered into his uncle's office, one of the first things Hubert had said to him was that his father had asked him to give thought to some useful employment for Elijah 'to take your mind off...other...concerns.' By the careful, appraising look the Viceroy had given him, Elijah was more than aware that the earl had taken his wife's brother into his confidence.
Any small pleasure that Elijah had felt in the enjoyment of a new situation withered at the outset.
***
Six months later, Elijah - always a quick study - had become fluent in Hindi, the main language of India, and in Hindustani, its main dialect, and had familiarised himself completely with the country's complex political machine. He had a retentive mind, and it proved useful.
"Of course, Ranjipore is the largest province in the land," his uncle droned on from across a desk very much like the one in his father's study. Elijah sighed quietly. He felt he had merely been relocated from one stultifying prison to another.
Coming back, a few weeks earlier, from the exclusive officer's club where he often chose to hide from his family, his uncle had issued dark warnings regarding some of the places of a 'less than savoury nature' as he put it, in the city.
"Stay away from the brothels, Lij," he had admonished. "Especially the...the boy-houses. There can only be trouble if you end up going there."
Elijah had raised eyes blazing with anger, and glared at his uncle, who was astonished by the expression in them. "Under no circumstances would I visit such a place, sir. You may assure my father of that at least, when next you write him a report concerning me. Now, if you will excuse me, it is half-past nine, and time to drink tea with Aunt Amabel."
He dragged his mind back to the present. His uncle was still talking - something about the Maharajah of Ranjipore. "....relatively young chap; a few years older than you, I seem to remember. Of course, technically, he is a king, although he prefers to be called 'Your Highness'. I have no idea why, as he is very high in the instep, very aware of his own worth. I hope you can get him to see sense. Heathcott made a fine mess of it when he was granted an audience, last year. Tried to talk down to the chap. They won't stand for that, I can tell you. I thought it may be that a younger man might get closer to the Rajah's mind."
Elijah pursed his lips. He was not averse to visiting Ranjipore. In fact he would be glad to get out of the city, climb high into the hills behind Simla, where the air would be cleaner. And at the very least he would not have to suffer any more bridge parties with Sir John and Lady Carmichael, and their spotty, vacuous daughters, Mildred and Agnes, whom his aunt had produced, rather like a conjurer taking two frightened rabbits out of a hat. Either of them would make an excellent, conformable wife, she had hinted - for the right man.
But Elijah had stared in horror across the enormous room at the two very plump girls seated beside an aspidistra, and thought that whoever the right man might prove to be, it was definitely not going to be him.
He thought it time he interpolated a word. His uncle was sitting expecting a comment. Elijah obliged in fluent Hindi. "You may assure yourself, sir, that I will do my best to bring the affair to a satisfactory conclusion. It will not be for want of trying, if I fail."
Lord Worth began to look a little more cheerful. "Well, you have come on in leaps and bounds, Lij - leaps and bounds! Your grasp of the languages is astonishing! I said to your aunt, only this morning, that I repose my complete trust in you to get us a move forward in this direction."
The next morning, Elijah, Boyd, and the mountain of luggage left Bombay in a train, for Ranjipore.
***
Elijah and Boyd sat in a reserved first class compartment of the train, unmolested by fellow travellers. It was considered odd by Elijah's acquaintance, that he did not consign his valet to the third class accommodation which was the more usual place for servants.
But Elijah was not a usual man. He kept Billy by him - not, as he had offered as a plausible excuse to the curious, because he preferred to be served his refreshments by someone who did not hook a grubby thumb over the rim of the cup whilst serving afternoon tea - but because riding in solitary state in a private carriage was boring.
In public, Billy was deferential and unassuming. In private, he was allowed more licence - but he knew where the line was, and seldom crossed it.
A rare exception had been in Italy, three years previously, when Elijah had come down with a fever. Boyd, his only companion on that trip, sat, day and night by his master's bedside for five days, coaxing him to drink the boiled lemonade that the doctor had thought indispensable to his lordship's survival.
Billy had held the cup to fever-parched lips. "Come on, now, lovely boy, drink it all up, there's a good wee laddie!" he had said, as Elijah had tried to focus on what was being said to him.
Several days later, he questioned Boyd about the episode. "Did you really call me 'lovely boy' and 'wee laddie', Billy? Or was I dreaming?"
Boyd had smiled. "No, my lord, you were not dreaming - and I had to get that water into ye somehow. Am I forgiven?"
Elijah had clapped his valet on the shoulder, and given him fifty pounds as a bonus, which Billy immediately gave to a fisherman's charity. "The wee widows need it more than I," he had said in explanation. That was the kind of man he was, thought Elijah looking out of the window with interest at the tiny wooden houses perched on the hillside rising to Simla.
Billy made an excellent travelling companion. He was ten years older than his master, a small, fair-haired man, with bright green eyes and an ever-present smile. He had joined Elijah at Oxford, and was, therefore, well-read, having devoured all Elijah's books as they came his way. There was no doubt in Elijah's mind that he helped pass many a tedious hour, and was glad to have him as a companion.
The carriages at the railway station at the top were about to leave immediately the luggage was loaded, the lead driver, who, bowing low, introduced himself as Duleep Singh, the Maharajah's horse-master, informed them. His Highness was expecting his lordship that evening. The drive, he revealed, would take four hours.
Elijah frowned. He had had a hot and wearying journey on a train, which had been, if not actually decrepit, well on its way to the scrap yard. He was hot, tired, hungry and sweating profusely. He was suffering from a minor indisposition, which was painful, as well as irksome. He had hoped for a few days respite at Simla, which was the summer garden for all the wives and children of the Englishmen who laboured below them to keep the peace of the fractured land intact. He wished for a bath, a meal and a bed.
He drew himself up to his full height, which was approximately on a level with the horsemaster's breastbone.
"Put the carriages away, if you please. I cannot be so discourteous to His Highness as to appear before him in all my dirt. I will rest tonight, and depart at seven thirty in the morning. Boyd, see to it!"
Boyd walked up to an army officer he could see conversing with a lady on the pavement, bowed to the lady, and asked directions to the nearest decent lodging. They were directed to the Pulteney Hotel, named after its English counterpart, and Elijah spent an hour soaking in a hot bath, before eating a very good dinner. He slept well, and rose when Boyd called him, at six the next morning, eager to set out.
The carriages were already loaded and waiting when Elijah emerged into the refreshing breeze of the morning.
Duleep Singh saluted Elijah, and swung himself upon the driver's seat, giving the horses the office to start. Elijah stared up at the mountains in front of them, and wondered what sort of palace Udom Singh inhabited in these forbidding hills.
The drive was long and tedious. Boyd had, very correctly, taken the second carriage, and consequently there was no-one to talk to. Elijah had attempted to ask Duleep Singh a few questions concerning the Maharajah, who was seldom seen outside his mountain retreat, and therefore, little was known of him. But, as the driver had to turn to face Elijah to answer any questions, he soon gave up, and confined himself to looking over the side of the track - for it could hardly be called a road, as wide as it was - at the lush greenness about him.
They did not stop to eat. Elijah had been given a flask of water by Billy, so at least he could sip that when the dust of the road got in his throat. The large boil that had developed above his right knee was throbbing; the material of his cream linen trousers rubbing annoyingly - and painfully - against it. He hoped Udom Singh had a doctor at the palace of Ranjipore. It needed attention before it festered in the heat.
"Not long now, my lord!" Duleep Singh called as they negotiated a sharp bend in the track, and Elijah was interested to note a group of riders waiting for them at the side of the road. All but one of them had rifles slung over their shoulders, and bandoliers of cartridges crossed over their chests. The one unarmed man, magnificently attired in rose and purple silks, rode forward.
He was a very handsome man. Long-limbed and olive skinned, with a pair of fine brown eyes that twinkled down upon Elijah. He spoke very good English.
"Welcome to Ranjipore, my lord. I am Osman Singh, cousin to the Lord Udom Singh. I hope your stay in our little palace will prove pleasant to you."
He cast laughing eyes over Elijah's luggage. "If you find yourself in need of anything whilst you are here, I am certain we can provide it for you!"
Elijah had doffed his hat as the man approached, and bowed as well as any man can bow who is sitting in a carriage. "I have heard of you, Lord Osman, and I am pleased to meet you." He held up his hand, and the rider leaned over to grasp it.
"If you will follow me, I will lead you into the Palace grounds."
Elijah looked about him, but could see no building nearby. He wondered if the palace was so small it could be hidden beside a dirt track.
Osman Singh wheeled his horse about, and after riding a few hundred yards ahead of the carriages, turned a sharp right, and disappeared. Elijah's carriage soon followed, and he found himself travelling down a gap in the rock only just wide enough to accommodate the vehicles. The sides of the passage reached high above his head, and Elijah, looking up, saw dozens of men, armed to the teeth, staring down at the cavalcade as it passed. No-one, it seemed, visited Ranjipore Palace unobserved.
Suddenly the carriage emerged from the rocky passage, and Elijah found himself in front of an enormous space, a wide, deep valley snugly surrounded by towering hills. The garden was filled with lawns, and flowering plants, that fronted the largest building he had ever seen. It seemed to shimmer in the heat of the mountain sun, golden stone, glimmering, line upon line, floor upon floor - stretching so far upon either side, that Elijah could see neither its beginning, nor its end.
Elijah laughed. Even Uncle Hubert would be impressed by this gigantic pile.
He sat up straight, adjusted his hat, and allowed himself to be driven, helpless, deep into the lion's den.
Beyond Simla - Part Two
Dom's Palace in Ranjipore
It is an AR of course, because India contained no state called Ranjipore. I'm on part 14, now, and enjoying it a lot. I hope you do, too. Hugs
Grateful thanks to
ladysunrope for her excellent beta. Hugs.Part - One
Udai Chand lay sick to death
in his hold by Gungra Hill.
All night they heard the death-gongs ring
for the soul of the dying Rajput King;
All night beat up from the Women's Wing
a cry that they could not still…
Rudyard Kipling - The Last Suttee
1864. Ranjipore, India.
Prince Udom Abhjah Bahadur Singh - Yuvaraja, or Crown Prince of Ranjipore - stood to attention beside his father's death bed, waiting for the very moment of the last breath, when the king would be reverently taken from the silken sheets, and laid upon the floor, to die in the straw, as his father's fathers had done for generations before him. To die as he was born, with no possessions but the light cotton shirt on his back.
He could hear the shrieks from the women in the zenana, but Udom knew his mother, a Boondi princess after all, had more dignity than to scream like a village goat-wife at such a time. He knew that she was, even now, dressing in her best silks, and choosing her finest jewels, preparing to die upon the funeral pyre, as her mother's mothers had, for generations before her, time out of mind.
So it would be, his uncle had told him earlier, as he prepared the boy for the dying-room, when it came to his turn to go into the unknown. But Udom Singh hoped that event would be a long time ahead.
As the gongs emitted their sonorous tones, Udom Singh whispered to his uncle again, asking if his father had thought the same thing - that death was a remote stranger, not to be encountered by him for many, many years. For his father was twenty six years old - cut down in his prime by a rogue tiger, during the morning hunt. His broken, slashed body had been brought back only a few hours before by his tearful servants, for Udom's father was a good and kindly ruler, and much beloved by all.
Udom sighed as his uncle told him that this - death - was one thing all men had in common. Udom did not find the thought comforting. He had been bereft, in one cruel slash of a tiger's razor sharp claws, of both his mother and his father. For it was unthinkable that Udai Singh's wife, Aditi - mother of gods - would allow her lord to travel to heaven alone.
And, his uncle had reminded him, under the cover of the clashing gongs, the British Army Colonels who had orders from the Government in London to stop such practises as suttee - the burning of widows on their husband's funeral pyre - were not near enough to prevent her leaping upon the fire to burn with her lord. Udai Singh's death was unexpected. There were no British of any consequence - either army or civilian - in the palace, except for a few mostly elderly souls who were totally devoted to his parents.
Udom bowed his head as his father was lowered onto the straw. He heard the last gasping breath, and stared at all the men present as they knelt at his feet, naming him the new Maharajah of Ranjipore, reciting his titles, and proclaiming their loyalty to him.
"You may rise, my good friends," he said, quietly as his uncle took his arm to lead him to say good-bye to his mother.
He was only nine years old, and could not keep his bottom lip from wobbling slightly, as he bade farewell to his father, but he mastered it.
His uncle left him at the zenana gates, where the women's wailing continued to be heard, now louder and higher. The eunuchs took the king inside.
Less than two hours later, Udom realised that he was an orphan.
***
Twenty years later. London, England.
The Earl of Stanforth sat behind his desk, glaring angrily at his son, seated uncomfortably on the other side of it. Stanforth had deliberately placed his son apart from him. The desk had proved a useful barrier. That was why he had chosen the office for this interview. He had never understood his son, and he was not about to start now, he thought, fiddling with his cigar clippers.
The earl lit up a cigar and puffed it in Elijah's direction, before he spoke. His tone was clipped and uncompromising. "I have promised your mother, Elijah, that you shall go. Good Lord, boy - the scandal, should the news get out!"
The earl re-lit his cigar, which had gone out despite his efforts, and turned his blue lapidiary gaze once more on the young man perched upon the edge of his chair.
"You understand why I am sending you, of course?" Elijah's father asked, not meeting his son's eyes.
"Yes, sir," came the soft answer.
Stanforth slapped his free hand down hard upon the desk. "That sort of thing is very well at Eton, or even at Oxford - one expects it in those places. But when one goes into the wider world, one must behave in a manner suitable to one's rank and station. One marries, and has children, and leaves all one's youthful indiscretions behind. One is not found, by one's father's valet, in flagrante with a tradesman however handsome or desirable that tradesman may be. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"The fact is that, at twenty seven, you have not married, nor have you - if I understand her correctly - even so much as glanced in the direction of the bevy of undoubted beauties your dear mother has presented to you, over the years, as suitable brides, and this revelation makes me understand your...er...inclinations a little better. But I cannot have it, Elijah. To be seen to scorn the company of women, and consort only with that gang of hooligans you call friends, and whom I can only stigmatise as Hell-Rakes.... No, you must go. You will not choose to disobey with me in this, will you?"
"No, sir."
"Yes, you must go - your mother expects it of you, she will have told you that. Very well. You leave on Thursday. Your passage has been booked on the Queen of Lahore. You have four days to get your things ready. Send for my agent, Bentham, for the details."
"I am sure India will prove the making of you. I shall wish you bon voyage, now, as I leave for Staperley, to stay with Lord Penworth, early in the morning. The races, y'know. So this is good-bye, then."
"Good-bye, sir," Elijah responded, as he quietly left the room.
He stepped lightly up the wide staircase of the house in Berkeley Square, and went immediately to his own rooms, where he would have peace and quiet. The interview he had suffered - it was the only word to describe it - with his mother, earlier, was still fresh in his mind. She had wept. She had spoken of the disgrace should his behaviour become common knowledge. She had begged him to go to India, where he would, she had said, be safe.
But not one word had she uttered as to what might be his feelings upon the matter - how he would feel being parcelled off abroad as were so many embarrassing and difficult sons - if one had the money to do so. He knew his behaviour had been outside the pale, and he must be disposed of - quietly, discreetly - lest it happen again.
His lover, Giles, was not the son of a tradesman, as his father had suggested, but the son of a merchant banker, well known and respected in the city. It was a shame, Elijah thought, that mutual lust had overcome them in the shrubbery, for he might have known that they would be discovered. Fortunately his father's man, Whimple, was loyal to his master's house, and had sworn never to divulge what he had seen.
Elijah was fond of Giles, but he did not love him. He would not be sorry to part company with him - he reminded him too much of the shock of discovery, and the look of disgust in Whimple's eyes when he found them, lying there.
India it must be.
The Viceroy of India was his uncle - his mother's brother. Uncle Hubert would find him a place there, where he could prove himself of use, she had said, weeping all down the bodice of her rose-coloured watered silk afternoon gown.
After Elijah had been disrobed, he dismissed his valet, as well as thoughts of his unhelpful parents, and flung himself, in despair, upon the bed.
He would die in India - dirty, heathen place as it was! Well, that would teach them! He laughed suddenly at the childish thought. He would make the best of it, as he always did. Only time would tell if his first fears had proved correct.
***
The voyage had seemed long - damn it! Elijah thought; it had been long. The accommodations allotted to him on the first class deck had been spacious and comfortable, but most of his fellow passengers had either been bright young girls, going to India in the hope of finding rich young men, who were desperate to marry a girl whom they could actually introduce to their mothers; or slightly older women, with children, going out to live with their husbands, in the heat of a country they had heard so much about in glowing letters from their spouses.
There had been few men with whom he wished to converse. The only likely candidate had been a handsome young lieutenant, who had made a promising start, but after only a few days had thrown out such heavy hints that he wanted more than conversation over tea and cucumber sandwiches, that Elijah withdrew abruptly from the acquaintance.
If he was going to India to avoid this sort of thing, it would not do for him to be found in flagrante again.
***
The tugs drew the ship into the Bombay Dock, as scheduled, at a little past nine on a bright Tuesday morning in August.
Elijah allowed the women and families to disembark first, and then watched carefully - until he saw the back of the fair lieutenant vanish into the distance - before he thanked the captain for a pleasant voyage, and walked slowly down the companion-way to where his valet was standing next to an enormous pile of luggage.
The heat, even at that early hour, was stifling, but Elijah was not bothered by it. He enjoyed the hot weather. Even in Egypt, the year before, he had not been uncomfortable.
Elijah stared at the pile of crocodile-skin cases. "Are you certain, Boyd, that we need all this...this..." Elijah waved a hand ineffectually at the mountain.
Billy Boyd allowed himself a grin. "Oh, aye, my lord. I consulted several of my colleagues about it - about Indian customs. Every item in yon cases guaranteed to be used during our stay, here, and more can be ordered as needed."
Elijah nodded absently, and looked about him. Uncle Hubert was to have sent a carriage for him, but no-one appeared to be waiting - not in that area, any way.
He knew the Viceroy's house was only a few minutes from the dock, so he asked Boyd to summon porters, and, several minutes later, six dilapidated rickshaws were wending their way through the Bombay streets, Elijah sitting in the front vehicle, enthroned, as Boyd had commented, like a Maharajah on a cushion of silk.
Elijah allowed Billy Boyd an uncommon degree of licence, but, with interested ears flapping all about them, he quelled the man's exuberance with a frown, and looked about him.
The first thing, apart from the heat, that Elijah noticed, was the smell. The hot air was redolent with spices, and something slightly more earthy that Elijah did not much care to identify.
He could not imagine his uncle living in such an atmosphere, but in a very little while the rickshaws had left the bustle and dirt of the main streets, and were headed down a broad, leafy avenue that could, apart from the heat, be set anywhere in England, and where the flowering trees gave off a heady scent.
The Viceroy's Palace was enormous - far larger than Elijah's parent's home in Berkeley Square. A huge barrack of a building, similar in style to Buckingham Palace, and nearly half as large, Elijah thought, scanning the huge facade.
Elijah remembered that his mother had said that Uncle Hubert had had it built to his own specifications, and knowing Hubert only too well, Elijah could understand it. He was a bluff man, amiable enough, but pompous, and eminently certain of his own superiority to other men. Elijah fervently hoped that he would not annoy his uncle, and that his father had not divulged to his brother-in-law the real reason he was being exiled here, far away from the life he had been so used to leading in London.
His hope was in vain. Ushered into his uncle's office, one of the first things Hubert had said to him was that his father had asked him to give thought to some useful employment for Elijah 'to take your mind off...other...concerns.' By the careful, appraising look the Viceroy had given him, Elijah was more than aware that the earl had taken his wife's brother into his confidence.
Any small pleasure that Elijah had felt in the enjoyment of a new situation withered at the outset.
***
Six months later, Elijah - always a quick study - had become fluent in Hindi, the main language of India, and in Hindustani, its main dialect, and had familiarised himself completely with the country's complex political machine. He had a retentive mind, and it proved useful.
"Of course, Ranjipore is the largest province in the land," his uncle droned on from across a desk very much like the one in his father's study. Elijah sighed quietly. He felt he had merely been relocated from one stultifying prison to another.
Coming back, a few weeks earlier, from the exclusive officer's club where he often chose to hide from his family, his uncle had issued dark warnings regarding some of the places of a 'less than savoury nature' as he put it, in the city.
"Stay away from the brothels, Lij," he had admonished. "Especially the...the boy-houses. There can only be trouble if you end up going there."
Elijah had raised eyes blazing with anger, and glared at his uncle, who was astonished by the expression in them. "Under no circumstances would I visit such a place, sir. You may assure my father of that at least, when next you write him a report concerning me. Now, if you will excuse me, it is half-past nine, and time to drink tea with Aunt Amabel."
He dragged his mind back to the present. His uncle was still talking - something about the Maharajah of Ranjipore. "....relatively young chap; a few years older than you, I seem to remember. Of course, technically, he is a king, although he prefers to be called 'Your Highness'. I have no idea why, as he is very high in the instep, very aware of his own worth. I hope you can get him to see sense. Heathcott made a fine mess of it when he was granted an audience, last year. Tried to talk down to the chap. They won't stand for that, I can tell you. I thought it may be that a younger man might get closer to the Rajah's mind."
Elijah pursed his lips. He was not averse to visiting Ranjipore. In fact he would be glad to get out of the city, climb high into the hills behind Simla, where the air would be cleaner. And at the very least he would not have to suffer any more bridge parties with Sir John and Lady Carmichael, and their spotty, vacuous daughters, Mildred and Agnes, whom his aunt had produced, rather like a conjurer taking two frightened rabbits out of a hat. Either of them would make an excellent, conformable wife, she had hinted - for the right man.
But Elijah had stared in horror across the enormous room at the two very plump girls seated beside an aspidistra, and thought that whoever the right man might prove to be, it was definitely not going to be him.
He thought it time he interpolated a word. His uncle was sitting expecting a comment. Elijah obliged in fluent Hindi. "You may assure yourself, sir, that I will do my best to bring the affair to a satisfactory conclusion. It will not be for want of trying, if I fail."
Lord Worth began to look a little more cheerful. "Well, you have come on in leaps and bounds, Lij - leaps and bounds! Your grasp of the languages is astonishing! I said to your aunt, only this morning, that I repose my complete trust in you to get us a move forward in this direction."
The next morning, Elijah, Boyd, and the mountain of luggage left Bombay in a train, for Ranjipore.
***
Elijah and Boyd sat in a reserved first class compartment of the train, unmolested by fellow travellers. It was considered odd by Elijah's acquaintance, that he did not consign his valet to the third class accommodation which was the more usual place for servants.
But Elijah was not a usual man. He kept Billy by him - not, as he had offered as a plausible excuse to the curious, because he preferred to be served his refreshments by someone who did not hook a grubby thumb over the rim of the cup whilst serving afternoon tea - but because riding in solitary state in a private carriage was boring.
In public, Billy was deferential and unassuming. In private, he was allowed more licence - but he knew where the line was, and seldom crossed it.
A rare exception had been in Italy, three years previously, when Elijah had come down with a fever. Boyd, his only companion on that trip, sat, day and night by his master's bedside for five days, coaxing him to drink the boiled lemonade that the doctor had thought indispensable to his lordship's survival.
Billy had held the cup to fever-parched lips. "Come on, now, lovely boy, drink it all up, there's a good wee laddie!" he had said, as Elijah had tried to focus on what was being said to him.
Several days later, he questioned Boyd about the episode. "Did you really call me 'lovely boy' and 'wee laddie', Billy? Or was I dreaming?"
Boyd had smiled. "No, my lord, you were not dreaming - and I had to get that water into ye somehow. Am I forgiven?"
Elijah had clapped his valet on the shoulder, and given him fifty pounds as a bonus, which Billy immediately gave to a fisherman's charity. "The wee widows need it more than I," he had said in explanation. That was the kind of man he was, thought Elijah looking out of the window with interest at the tiny wooden houses perched on the hillside rising to Simla.
Billy made an excellent travelling companion. He was ten years older than his master, a small, fair-haired man, with bright green eyes and an ever-present smile. He had joined Elijah at Oxford, and was, therefore, well-read, having devoured all Elijah's books as they came his way. There was no doubt in Elijah's mind that he helped pass many a tedious hour, and was glad to have him as a companion.
The carriages at the railway station at the top were about to leave immediately the luggage was loaded, the lead driver, who, bowing low, introduced himself as Duleep Singh, the Maharajah's horse-master, informed them. His Highness was expecting his lordship that evening. The drive, he revealed, would take four hours.
Elijah frowned. He had had a hot and wearying journey on a train, which had been, if not actually decrepit, well on its way to the scrap yard. He was hot, tired, hungry and sweating profusely. He was suffering from a minor indisposition, which was painful, as well as irksome. He had hoped for a few days respite at Simla, which was the summer garden for all the wives and children of the Englishmen who laboured below them to keep the peace of the fractured land intact. He wished for a bath, a meal and a bed.
He drew himself up to his full height, which was approximately on a level with the horsemaster's breastbone.
"Put the carriages away, if you please. I cannot be so discourteous to His Highness as to appear before him in all my dirt. I will rest tonight, and depart at seven thirty in the morning. Boyd, see to it!"
Boyd walked up to an army officer he could see conversing with a lady on the pavement, bowed to the lady, and asked directions to the nearest decent lodging. They were directed to the Pulteney Hotel, named after its English counterpart, and Elijah spent an hour soaking in a hot bath, before eating a very good dinner. He slept well, and rose when Boyd called him, at six the next morning, eager to set out.
The carriages were already loaded and waiting when Elijah emerged into the refreshing breeze of the morning.
Duleep Singh saluted Elijah, and swung himself upon the driver's seat, giving the horses the office to start. Elijah stared up at the mountains in front of them, and wondered what sort of palace Udom Singh inhabited in these forbidding hills.
The drive was long and tedious. Boyd had, very correctly, taken the second carriage, and consequently there was no-one to talk to. Elijah had attempted to ask Duleep Singh a few questions concerning the Maharajah, who was seldom seen outside his mountain retreat, and therefore, little was known of him. But, as the driver had to turn to face Elijah to answer any questions, he soon gave up, and confined himself to looking over the side of the track - for it could hardly be called a road, as wide as it was - at the lush greenness about him.
They did not stop to eat. Elijah had been given a flask of water by Billy, so at least he could sip that when the dust of the road got in his throat. The large boil that had developed above his right knee was throbbing; the material of his cream linen trousers rubbing annoyingly - and painfully - against it. He hoped Udom Singh had a doctor at the palace of Ranjipore. It needed attention before it festered in the heat.
"Not long now, my lord!" Duleep Singh called as they negotiated a sharp bend in the track, and Elijah was interested to note a group of riders waiting for them at the side of the road. All but one of them had rifles slung over their shoulders, and bandoliers of cartridges crossed over their chests. The one unarmed man, magnificently attired in rose and purple silks, rode forward.
He was a very handsome man. Long-limbed and olive skinned, with a pair of fine brown eyes that twinkled down upon Elijah. He spoke very good English.
"Welcome to Ranjipore, my lord. I am Osman Singh, cousin to the Lord Udom Singh. I hope your stay in our little palace will prove pleasant to you."
He cast laughing eyes over Elijah's luggage. "If you find yourself in need of anything whilst you are here, I am certain we can provide it for you!"
Elijah had doffed his hat as the man approached, and bowed as well as any man can bow who is sitting in a carriage. "I have heard of you, Lord Osman, and I am pleased to meet you." He held up his hand, and the rider leaned over to grasp it.
"If you will follow me, I will lead you into the Palace grounds."
Elijah looked about him, but could see no building nearby. He wondered if the palace was so small it could be hidden beside a dirt track.
Osman Singh wheeled his horse about, and after riding a few hundred yards ahead of the carriages, turned a sharp right, and disappeared. Elijah's carriage soon followed, and he found himself travelling down a gap in the rock only just wide enough to accommodate the vehicles. The sides of the passage reached high above his head, and Elijah, looking up, saw dozens of men, armed to the teeth, staring down at the cavalcade as it passed. No-one, it seemed, visited Ranjipore Palace unobserved.
Suddenly the carriage emerged from the rocky passage, and Elijah found himself in front of an enormous space, a wide, deep valley snugly surrounded by towering hills. The garden was filled with lawns, and flowering plants, that fronted the largest building he had ever seen. It seemed to shimmer in the heat of the mountain sun, golden stone, glimmering, line upon line, floor upon floor - stretching so far upon either side, that Elijah could see neither its beginning, nor its end.
Elijah laughed. Even Uncle Hubert would be impressed by this gigantic pile.
He sat up straight, adjusted his hat, and allowed himself to be driven, helpless, deep into the lion's den.
Beyond Simla - Part Two
Dom's Palace in Ranjipore
