‘Is that something you’re good at? Tactics, I mean?’
He shrugged.
‘So what are you doing here today?’
‘I’ve just been doing a spot of hawking with Jay. Please don’t make life harder for him, Miss Fraser. He doesn’t have an easy time of it here as it is, and I’m not sure that his spending time with you will benefit his already troubled relationship with Chatur.’
‘Is Chatur really so powerful?’
He nodded. ‘I’m afraid he is. Anyway, on another note Jay tells me you once lived in India.’
‘Just in Delhi when I was a child, but after my father died we went back to live in England.’
He was looking at his feet and stubbing his toe into some pebbles, and didn’t speak.
‘Well, thank you for helping me,’ Eliza said. ‘I appreciate it.’ And she turned to pack up her things.
The next day she found herself alone with Jayant again. This time she was climbing into an open-top sidecar attached to a motorcycle. She hadn’t known Jay would be the one to accompany her to the Indian village but apparently he had offered to do it, which surprised and delighted her. Today he wore a long Indian-style tunic shirt with European trousers, both in charcoal grey, and on his skin there was the faint scent of sandalwood, just like Laxmi, but with a tang of cedar too and maybe limes.
‘I like the motorbike,’ she said.
‘I used to have a 1925 Brough Superior but it was stolen earlier this year. This is a Harley-Davidson.’
As they got going, sand rose in clouds from the wheels of the bike, but she focused on the road ahead and, only after she’d recovered from the strange feeling of self-consciousness, she decided to use it as an opportunity. There was so much she still didn’t know about Jay and about his world. Sometimes a kind of darkness surrounded him, but there was joy and vigour in him too, though there was also an edge. Definitely an edge.
‘I hope you’re not going to tell me this is another journey of several days?’ she shouted up at him.
He laughed. ‘It’s really not so far, there and back by tea time, but there’s a great deal to see. It’s a perfect rural village and you’ll be able to see how life is lived and hopefully capture some interesting faces. It’s also where Indi came from.’
As they rode through the Rajput countryside the air was still surprisingly moist. Eliza spotted goats grazing in the middle of the road, and they passed camels and buffaloes; it made her realize how quickly she was becoming acclimatized to this new world. She loved the smells of the desert sands and the wind blowing through her hair and the way it seemed to fill her up with the thing she had been missing for so long.
‘The simple life continues here as it has for many centuries,’ Jay shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Craftspeople weave rugs of camel hair, as they always have, and make water pots of local clay. I like to come this way for the birds.’
‘You’re a birdwatcher?’
‘Not really, but we’re on the migratory path of many species. If you keep your eyes peeled, you’ll spot parakeets and peafowl.’
The whole time he was talking Eliza was thinking and appreciating a new kind of excitement about life that she’d never experienced before. Every time they met, something new about him surprised her.
‘If we go out to Olvi lake there are waterfowl, herons, kingfishers, grebes and waders. Sometimes demoiselle cranes.’
‘Stop,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’ve got a head full of sand and heat. It’s too much to take in and I can’t hear properly over the noise of the bike.’
At that moment she spotted an animal she’d never seen before and he stilled the engine.
‘It’s the chinkara, an Asian gazelle, though you’re likely to see more black buck here.’ But he seemed distracted and paused as if thinking something through. ‘While it’s true that much of ordinary life is unchanged, for us – the rulers – you have to understand that the British have supplanted our powers with their own system of indirect rule.’
She frowned but felt encouraged enough to question him. ‘But I don’t understand why the Princes signed the treaties with the British. Why did they give so much away?’
‘Rajputs originally came from beyond this region and needed to conquer lands that then became theirs. Everything came down to kinship and clan and the pursuit of territory. The different clans constantly fought each other in the hope of acquiring even more land and wealth. Our military strength increased through marriages arranged between different clans.’
‘At home the aristocracy only marry each other too. Weak chins, you know!’
He laughed.
‘The British offered to take on the responsibility of safeguarding our territories, but in exchange we had to act in subordination to them.’
‘Strange that you agreed.’
