F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

Oh, for a breeze. Or better still, rain. But neither was due for another month. He had heard that when the summer monsoon started blowing from the southwest in July there would be plenty of rain. Until then, he and his men would have to fry.

It could be worse.

He could have been sent with the others to retake Meerut and Delhi from the rebels… forced marches along the Ganges basin in full uniform and kit, rushing to face hordes of crazed Sepoys waving their bloody talwars and shouting " Din! Din! Din !"

He shuddered. Not for me, thank you very much.

Luckily, the rebellion had not spread this far east, at least not to any appreciable extent. That was fine with Westphalen. He intended to stay as far away from the pandies as he could. He knew from regimental records that there were a total of 20,000 British troops on the subcontinent. What if all of India's untold millions decided to rise up and end the British Raj? It was a recurrent nightmare. There would be no more Raj.

And no more East India Company. Which, Westphalen knew, was the real reason the army was here—to protect "John Company's" interests. He had sworn to fight for the Crown and he was willing—up to a point—to do that, but he'd be damned if he was going to die fighting for a bunch of tea traders. After all, he was a gentleman and had only accepted a commission out here to forestall the financial catastrophe threatening his estate. And perhaps to make some contacts during his term of service. He had arranged for a purely administrative job: no danger. All part of a simple plan to allow him time to find a way to recoup his considerable gambling losses—one might even say incredible losses for a man just forty years of age—and then go home and straighten out his debts. He grimaced at the enormous amount of money he had squandered since his father had died and the baronetcy had passed to him.

But his luck had run true here on the far side of the world—it stayed bad. There had been years of peace in India before he had come—a little trouble here and there, but nothing serious. The Raj had seemed totally secure. But now he knew that dissension and discontent among the native recruits had been bubbling beneath the surface, waiting, it seemed, for his arrival. He had been here not even a year, and what happened? The Sepoys go on a rampage!

It wasn't fair.

But it could be worse, Albert, old boy, he told himself for the thousandth time that day. It could be worse.

And it most certainly could be far better. Better to be back in Calcutta at Fort William. Not much cooler, but closer to the sea there. If India explodes, it's just a hop and a skip to a boat on the Hoogly River and then off to the safety of the Bay of Bengal.

He took another sip and leaned his back against the wall. It wasn't an officerly posture but he really didn't give a bloody damn at this point. His office was like a freshly stoked furnace. The only sane thing to do was to stay here under the awning with a water jug until the sun got lower in the sky. Three o'clock now. It should be cooling down soon.

He waved his hand through the air around his face. If he ever got out of India alive, the one thing he would remember more vividly than the heat and humidity were the flies. They were everywhere, encrusting everything in the marketplace— the pineapples, the oranges, the lemons, the piles of rice—all were covered with black dots that moved and flew and hovered, and lit again. Bold, arrogant flies that landed on your face and darted away just before you could slap them.

That incessant buzz—was it shoppers busy haggling with the merchants, or was it hordes of flies?

The smell of hot bread wafted by his nose. The couple in the stall across the alley to his left sold chupattis , little disks of unleavened bread that were a dietary staple of everyone in India, rich and poor alike. He remembered trying them on a couple of occasions and finding them tasteless. For the last hour the woman had been leaning over a dung fire cooking an endless stream of chupattis on flat iron plates. The temperature of the air around that fire had to be a hundred and thirty degrees.

How do these people stand it?

He closed his eyes and wished for a world free of heat, drought, avaricious creditors, senior officers, and rebellious Sepoys. He kept them closed, enjoying the relative darkness behind the lids. It would be nice to spend the rest of the day like this, just leaning here and—

It wasn't a sound that snapped his eyes open; it was the lack of it. The street had gone utterly silent. As he straightened from the wall, he could see the shoppers who had been busy inspecting goods and haggling over prices now disappearing into alleys and side streets and doorways—no rush, no panic, but moving with deliberate swiftness, as if they had all suddenly remembered somewhere else they had to be.

Only the merchants remained… the merchants and their flies.

Wary and uneasy, Westphalen gripped the handle of the sabre slung at his left hip. He had been trained in its use but had never actually had to defend himself with it. He hoped he wouldn't have to now.

He sensed movement off to his left and turned.

A squat little toad of a man swathed in the orange dhoti of a holy man was leading a train of six mules on a leisurely course down the middle of the street.

Westphalen allowed himself to relax. Just a svamin of some sort. There was always one or another of them about.

As he watched, the priest veered to the far side of the street and stopped his mules before a cheese stand. He did not move from his place at the head of the train, did not even look left or right. He simply stood and waited. The cheese maker quickly gathered up some of his biggest blocks and wheels and brought them out to the little man, who inclined his head a few degrees after an instant's glance at the offering. The merchant put these in a sack tied to the back of one of the mules, then retreated to the rear of his stall.

Not a rupee had changed hands.

Westphalen watched with growing amazement.

Next stop was on Westphalen's side of the street, the chupatti stall next door. The husband brought a basketful out for inspection. Another nod, and these too were deposited on the back of a mule.

Again, no money changed hands—and no questions about quality. Westphalen had never seen anything like it since his arrival in India. These merchants would haggle with their mothers over the price of breakfast.

He could imagine only one thing that could wring such cooperation from them: fear.

The priest moved on without stopping at the water stand.

"Something wrong with your water?" Westphalen said to the vendor squatting on the ground beside him. He spoke in English. He saw no reason to learn an Indian tongue, and had never tried. There were fourteen major languages on this Godforsaken subcontinent and something like two hundred and fifty dialects. An absurd situation. What few words he had picked up had been through osmosis rather than conscious effort. After all, it was the natives' responsibility to learn to understand him. And most of them did, especially the merchants.

"The temple has its own water," the vendor said without looking up.

"Which temple is that?"

Westphalen wanted to know what the priest held over these merchants' heads to make them so compliant. It was information that might prove useful in the future.

"The Temple-in-the-Hills."

"I didn't know there was a temple in the hills."

This time the water vendor raised his turbaned head and stared at him. The dark eyes held a disbelieving look, as if to say, How could you not know?

"And to which one of your heathen gods is this particular temple dedicated?" His words seemed to echo in the surrounding silence.