Free Nightrunners of Bengal by John Masters

in the state. You still look’s if you’re on parade—jus’ happen to be reclining. Can you never relax? Try, jus’ thish once, feel like a prince—be Jonathan Savage.”
    “That was nearly eighty years ago, Prithvi.”
    “An’ now you’re not a’venturers any more? Jus’ bits great pomp-pompous machine? C’mon, try, jus’ please me.” He subsided with a belch and closed his eyes.
    Rodney thought perhaps he could afford to unbend a little;Dellamain and Julio gone, no other Englishman here to stand in judgment on his behaviour. He forced a small musical burp and giggled.
    In the Rani’s court there were old men, Oriental Minnesingers; at night they told tales of Rawan history—of the magnificence, of hawking and hunting, of war, torture, and single combat. Rodney no longer read Marco Polo, for the old men’s stories were as true and as thrilling. The Rani encouraged them to embroider the legendary splendour remembered of his great-grandfather, Jonathan Savage; of how he had lived like a prince, and gone away at last with presents and loot worth half a million rupees. Rodney wondered fretfully what in hades he’d done with it. He hadn’t got it.
    The room was warm; its luxury of gold and wine and music touched his jealousy. Four hundred rupees odd a month, Joanna’s pearls not paid for, Robin’s schooling to come—and there ought to be more children when she got over her fright or her pretended worry about her figure; or was it the fright that was pretence? Why did no one offer him a nice large bribe? What for? What reason on earth would anyone have to bribe a soldier these days? The civil, now! That was the place, and the middle of last century the time! India was a golden jungle then, and his own standards would have been different. Jonathan Savage took bribes and thought nothing of it Even William, Rodney’s father, who had never taken one so far as he knew, had not regarded venality as a form of social leprosy; neither that, nor sexual immorality, nor drunkenness, nor anything—except lack of physical courage. That had been the eighteenth century’s code, the code of the Regency bucks. This damned Albert was the root of the trouble, imposing his stodgy German decorum on the Queen and through her on all her subjects. The English had been a riotous crew once; they were a damned dull lot now. It was too late; he’d been bred and raised in the new propriety. He couldn’t take a bribe, even if he wanted to and if someone were fool enough to offer him one.
    He brushed back the hair falling over his forehead and drank moodily. Prithvi Chand lolled on the scarlet silk covers, asleep now, his mouth open. Through drowsy eyes Rodney saw that only one lamp remained burning in a far corner. The few other guests, all men, had drifted away unnoticed, and the servants had gone. The weak glimmer of the lamp contracted the room so that its gold and scarlet hangings blurred close over him. The curtains were drawn on the musicians’ balcony. An Indian violin etched arabesques on the night; a drummer beat with two hands on his drum; each hand beat a separate rhythm, each rhythm different from the violin’s. The three rhythms followed their paths, came together at a point of sound, paused, separated, and in due time again met. Six girls danced; their hands writhed, slowing as the music slowed. Each girl wore two anklets on her right ankle; the anklets chimed, chink-chink, chink-chink. Shields and swords gleamed like silver ciphers on the walls. The light dimmed.
    A brown girl trembled in the centre of the floor. She wore no anklets, or swinging skirt, or tight-drawn bodice. As her naked body moved, the glancing curves of light moved, and Prithvi Chand slept. The outer verges of darkness had swallowed the other dancers. Perhaps they lay beyond the light, locked with soldiers or courtiers, like the spread-eagled women of the temple carvings and the gods who grasped them with many hands—locked for ever, carved of one