As she glanced around Eliza could feel the anxiety that had gripped the crowd begin to lessen, and she hoped the woman had survived.
‘But this is a rum thing,’ Clifford continued. ‘Very rum. I’ve never seen anything like it. Though with the Prince gone I expect we shall now win the day. So that’s something. I doubt he’ll ride a different pony after all this.’
3
The following day Eliza and Jayant Singh left the marble halls and walked out into carved pink sandstone courtyards, gleaming and glittering in the pale early morning light; then on through interconnecting pavilions to a place where cooler breezes blew through scented gardens. Although Eliza was still thinking about the polo match, something about the grandeur made her stand up straighter, elongate her neck and walk with pride, and as she threw her scarf over her head it billowed out. With just that simple feminine action she felt as if she had momentarily stepped into the embroidered shoes of an Indian queen.
‘This place almost looks as if it’s made from sandalwood and not sandstone,’ she said, as they reached a formal garden bordered by a wall where the culprits of last night’s racket were strutting. Peacocks! When one took off from the wall and flopped its way to the ground, she laughed. Who knew beauty could be so ungainly?
‘Planted in the eighteenth century,’ the Prince said, indicating the rose bushes, cypresses, palms and orange trees.
They left the castle by way of a ramp that passed through seven arched gateways. On their way through one of the gates Eliza spotted five rows of hands sculpted on one of the side walls.
‘Made from thesatihandprints,’ the Prince said, seeming utterly unconcerned. ‘On their way to the funeral pyre the women dipped their hands in red powder and pressed their hands against the walls to express their devotion. Then later the prints were sculpted.’
Eliza gasped. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘We call the woman who dies asatiand you British call the actual act suttee. It has been illegal in British India since 1829 and here in the princely states after that, with a ban for the whole of India issued by Queen Victoria in 1861. But still …’
She already knew about the ritual immolation of the widows of Rajput Princes, and the ordinary women too, but felt sick at the thought of it. Could they have truly believed widow-burning was an honourable way to die? It was almost impossible to comprehend how the women must have felt.
She gazed at the sandy lanes of the medieval city, packed tightly with craftsmen of every kind, and thought of her first sight of the immense walls with all these bastions and towers. She glanced back at the fort. Rising impregnable from a rocky hill, it was clearly built from stone chiselled out of the rock on which it stood. Who knew how many women from within those walls must have died on the fire?
They climbed into the car and after a while, as they left the city behind, Eliza gazed at the desert, where winds lifted the burning sands and thickened the air. For mile after mile of flat plains, the road ribboned through a sun-bleached landscape, with sparse acacias and thorn bushes only intermittently punctuated by patches of lush green. It was a lonely, empty place, and Jayant Singh was silent, clearly concentrating on driving along barely distinguishable roads. Eliza excused his silence; however, a man who took up so much mental and physical space was not somebody you could wholly ignore. She sensed a kind of wildness in him. It bothered her, and she felt tense and awkward, but tried to make conversation; only his taciturn responses meant she eventually gave up and sank back into reverie, allowing the assault on her senses to engulf her. Then, just as she was slipping into a daydream of palaces, gardens and swinging monkeys, and at the precise moment the face of her father was about to appear, Jayant began to talk.
‘My saddle had been tampered with,’ he said, and, at the sound of his warm smoky voice, she came to with a jolt. ‘I saw you at the polo yesterday. I’m sure you must be wondering.’
‘I was sorry to see what happened. How do you know? About the tampering, I mean?’
‘The billet strap had been split. I checked it the day before but arrived too late to check again yesterday. The billet is the most vulnerable part of the girthing mechanism. I should have checked again.’
‘And that caused the horse to buck?’
‘No, that was down to the prickly acacia hooks some idiot placed under the saddle.’
‘Oh God! You mean actual sabotage.’ She thought of the two Indian men who had looked so shifty. ‘You might have been killed.’
He smiled. ‘Broken something more like, but as you can see I’m fine. However, my horse might have been killed. I can’t forgive that, and as for that poor woman …’
‘How is she?’
‘She has concussion, I believe. Thankfully it wasn’t worse.’
‘That makes me so angry. It’s horrible to think it was done wilfully.’
His voice deepened. ‘Childish is what it is. My horse is a beauty, with stamina, agility and speed. That’s what I care about, and God knows what more might have happened in the crowd. It gives polo a bad name.’
‘What can you do about it?’
‘I’ve complained to Clifford Salter and the polo authorities but we can’t prove who did it. I have my suspicions, but they were just a motley visiting team and have departed now.’
Eliza kept her thoughts about seeing the two Indian men laughing to herself. Although the Prince had looked furious at the time, he seemed relatively philosophical about it now.
‘So what is your interest in us, Miss Fraser?’
‘You know what it is. I have a job to do.’
‘Strange that Mr Salter chose an unknown woman.’
