Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

Malderini promised by secret arts both to increase his wealth and restore his failing virility, and the question of the child's age was overcome by an undertaking that she should remain in charge of the women until she was thirteen.

At length my poor bother gave way and the ceremony of marriage was performed. By mesmerising him Malderini did, for a time, increase his potency, but said that he could obtain riches for him only by making a journey to the far mountains of the north, and that he must take his young wife and sister with him. In due course, with numerous attendants, they set off. What happened later we can only guess from hearsay the garbled versions of some of the bearers who returned weeks later.

'The sister was much the stronger personality of the two; and it may be that her brother had for long secretly resented her dominance over him. Be that as it may, after a night when the cavalcade had camped in desolate country, he suddenly announced that she was ill of fever. For two days he would allow no one except himself to tend her or enter her tent in which she lay. Two mornings later he declared her dead and that, the fever having been a form of plague, her body must be disposed of at once. He had himself already sewn it up in a sheet, and he had it thrown over a precipice.'

The Wazier paused, then went on impressively, 'Yet the bearers who returned say that the body in the sheet had already the stench of decay. And more, more; on the first morning the vultures gathered overhead. Carrion birds have an awareness of death which brings them from afar. She must have been dead then, and Malderini's pretence that she was ill of a fever a cloak to conceal that he had murdered her.'

'How long was it, Excellency,' Roger asked, 'before he again appeared in Bahna?'

'Not until six weeks ago. He had learned of my brother's death, and returned to claim his wife's inheritance.'

'Ah, now I understand. Did he bring the Princess with him?'

'No. He told us that her health would not permit her to travel.'

'She was well enough when I saw her with him in England nine months ago. But there is a very different explanation. He has almost complete control over her; yet she escaped from it the night before my duel with him long enough to beg me to kill him. She regards him as the personification of evil, and he is doubtless aware of that. If so, he would not dare to bring her back here, from fear that once she was among her own people she would find means to rid herself of him.'

Rai-​ul-​daula nodded. 'Poor woman. Yes; no doubt you are right. I come now to what followed my brother's death. I had for some ten years been his Wazier. It was his wish that I should retain that office. Given normal circumstances, with the" exercise of tact, I foresaw no great difficulty in doing so. He chose his heir without consulting me; but my authority was sufficient to make any of his sons hold me in respect for some years at least, and during them I expected to inculcate into whichever was chosen sound principles for the government of Bahna.

The present Rajah, Jawahir-​ul-​daula, is a vain and vicious youth. As is not unusual at such successions, within a week he had his two most gifted half-​brothers strangled. I made no protest, for to do so would not only have been futile, but also make him distrustful of me. I gave him his head, too, when he wished to play the peacock before his court by refusing to accede the Company's demands. Why not? The weakness and vacillation your Sir John Shore showed in the affairs of Oudh, when he had to settle the succession to our cousin the Nawab Asaf-​ul-​daula, made it clear to me that he would take no steps against us until positively driven to it and, in the meantime, we would have the use of the money.'

Roger could not help smiling as the squint-​eyed Wazier went on. 'That was well enough; but I am not so great a fool as to expect to get the better of the Company for always. Bahna is too small a State and too near to Bengal to pick a quarrel of gravity with the English. This Sir John Shore will in time go home. There will come another. Not as great, perhaps, as your Lord Clive, or as wise and strong as your Mr. Hastings; but a true representative of your race, like the Lord Cornwallis or the Sir Eyre Coote. Then there would come war. Indian troops make brave warriors when led by their Princes one state against another, but they are no match for your redcoats, or the sepoy troops you train so cleverly, Bahna would be swiftly conquered, a huge fine imposed upon us, and the throne perhaps lost for good to my family. Am I not right?'

'Indeed, Excellency,' Roger bowed. 'Your words are full of wisdom.'

'Good. Then it will not surprise you to know that when we learned of the approach of Colonel Gunston's force I was prepared to compromise. My advice to His Highness was to pay half and to continue to argue about paying the other half for as long as possible. But the accursed Malderini had already been here for some weeks. By then he had succeeded in making himself the master not only of the mind of our young Rajah but, apart from myself, of those of the principal men of the court.

'I believe him to be in the pay of the French; but of that I am not certain. It is clear only that he is set on making trouble for us with the English. My advice was overruled, the Company's troops were refused entrance to Bahna and the Colonel Gunston told that we would pay no part of the debt. But worse has followed. Malderini set off for Calcutta and kidnapped this English lady, your wife. Using her…'

At that Roger could no longer contain his impatience to speak of Clarissa, and he broke in, 'Forgive me, Excellency; but I am consumed with anxiety about her. Malderini said that she was in the palace and in good health. Was he telling the truth?'

'Yes,' the Wazier nodded. Then waving a hand towards the old lady who, since she had brought Roger into the room, had been sitting quietly in a corner listening to them, he added: 'My honoured mother, the Begum Gunavati, saw her only this morning. She will confirm that your wife has suffered neither hardship nor injury.'

Springing up, Roger turned with a bow to the Begum and cried: 'I beg your Highness to tell me of her.'

The old lady gave him a kindly smile, and said: 'You have no cause for anxiety about her bodily state, and she seems sad rather than unhappy. She eats well but speaks little, and that is not because she lacks enough words of Urdu to make her meaning understood. For hours she sits doing nothing, as though she were living in a dream. That, I fear, is because this evil man has cast a spell upon her. The remedy is an ancient one and may prove difficult of accomplishment. To restore her to herself you must bring about his death, then burn his heart and cause her to eat some of its ashes in a stew of garlic'

'I pray only for the chance to kill him,' Roger exclaimed, then he swung back to the Wazier. 'I implore your Excellency's help in this. Please have me taken back by your men, into the palace and led to the room he occupies.'

Rai-​ul-​daula shook his head. 'That is not possible. The door by which you left the palace will have been bolted after you. I have no means of communicating with the eunuch who let you out, or any other way in which 1 could secure your entrance.'

'Tomorrow then!' Roger urged. 'You could arrange for the eunuch to let me in tomorrow night; and if I had a man to guide me…'

'No, no; no! Even if I could do this without risk of it being discovered that it was I who had aided you, I would not. It would lead only to your death. Had it been possible to have him strangled, he would be dead by now. I would have seen to that. But he is too alert, too well guarded. And did he learn that I had sponsored your attempt, his influence with His Highness is enough to bring about my death also.'