The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy (3 page)

Mahmud Ali Khan's English was very good, and by now Charles Bingley and Brian Maddox were used to the local accent. Bingley's trade with the East India Company in Calcutta was purchasing dye, but he was in talks to open a cotton plant. The company promised astronomical returns on such an investment, but Mahmud said he was hesitant to introduce a new crop to his extensive lands. Somehow Mahmud had obtained a Baker rifle from the local Sepoy Battalion—Indians employed as soldiers by the British—and was utterly fascinated by it.

“It's the cartridge,” Charles Bingley said immediately. “Let me show you—when it cools down.”

Tea was brought for them, and the three men—the mogul lord, the fair-haired trader and the Englishman dressed in Japanese clothing—sat beneath a red umbrella. They looked out over their host's gardens, all neatly arranged into rows of plants neither Bingley nor Brian could recognize, but which seemed more colorful than anything they had in England. Beyond them, not far north but out of their direct sight, lay the Ganges. They were trying to purchase tickets for a boat to Agra. Bingley was desperate to see the Taj
Mahal, having heard its virtues extolled many times before he left England. Brian found himself in a more tentative position when exploring the Indian mainland. All of their stops so far—Bombay, Madras and Calcutta—had been coastal and sufficiently English. A thorough Orientalist himself, Brian had weighed his own interests against the fact that he had promised to deliver Bingley safely home. And Brian was not keen on committing seppuku because his cousin had drowned in the sacred river, or had gotten his head bitten off by a tiger, or had been knifed by an insulted shopkeeper because he had mispronounced something in Hindustani and insulted the shopkeeper's daughter. The first threat had been on the boat itself, when Bingley's fair skin had gotten sunburned quite badly in one afternoon. He had spent the rest of the trip wearing one of Brian's bowl-shaped gasa hats, at the expense of Bingley's dignity before the crew.

Bingley had done his best to prepare. Once he had secured his wife's approval for the trip—which he had obtained at a cost he refused to mention—he went to Bath, where the legendary ex-Sepoy Dean Mahomet had a bathhouse. There, Bingley had spent many hours with the bathhouse owner attempting to pronounce languages he had only read in books and never heard spoken. He had also hired a drawing instructor. His penmanship was still hopeless, but to everyone's surprise, he had turned out to be quite talented with a charcoal pencil when using his left hand, mainly because there was no ink involved. He was most dutiful about sketching all that he saw in India as he assumed that life would never bring him to these parts again.

Brian, who had already ridden their company's boat once to the Orient with his wife a year earlier, focused on planning the route.They would be gone easily eight months, and the only communications possible would be from the Cape or Bombay back to England. He had never left his wife for that long in their entire marriage, but she had reassured him that keeping Bingley from getting
himself killed was of paramount importance, and she would be fine. She was a samurai's wife, so he had no doubt of it.

So far, no incidents had occurred on the trip that succeeded in taking either of their lives. That was why Brian had accepted the invitation from Mahmud Ali Khan to visit his palace beyond the boundaries of British Calcutta.

Now they sat on pillows as the gun cooled before Bingley. That gentleman, who was familiar with guns from his love of the sport of shooting, picked it up and demonstrated how to load the powder and the cartridge, just as the servant had done. “The key is to make sure the cartridge is all the way in. Sometimes you have to do this…”

He set the gun down, took the ramrod in both hands, and shoved it hard into the barrel.

“…to get in there.”

He removed the ramrod, brought the rifle to his right shoulder, and fired high into the sky.

“Perfect!” Mahmud clapped with delight. He stood up and clasped his hands together. “I am grateful to you, Mr. Bingali.”

“It's no trouble,” Bingley said, handing the rifle back to him.

“No, let me invite you to my daughter's wedding tonight. Surely you will come?”

Bingley cast a glance at Brian, sitting with one of his swords resting on his right shoulder. Brian nodded.

With his patented winning smile, Bingley said, “We'd love to come.”

The male crowd that gathered for the wedding of Mahmud's second daughter (out of eight) were largely Muslim moguls, the earliest arrivals arriving in time for evening prayer. The rest were a diverse group of people—Afghans, Hindu Brahmins, a few British officers from the nearest base, and higher-ranked local Bengal troops. The spoken language was mostly Persian, with a surprising amount of
English, and, of course, Hindustani, Punjabi, Urdu, and some scattered Arabic—or at least what Bingley was fairly sure was Arabic.

Neither Brian nor Bingley had ever seen such a display of Oriental pageantry, and they had seen quite a bit of it in the past month. The houses and pavilions were adorned with green branches and bright orange flowers in an elaborate fashion. They passed rows of musicians, and lowered seats, and had been instructed not to speak to the people on the lowered seats beneath them. “Lower class” was a term taken quite literally in India.

The bridegroom was carried in on a palanquin, followed by a train of servants with lit torches, leading him from the house on one end that was his to the place where the bride sat, whom he had never met. Brian had to be careful not to lose Bingley in the crowd of overexcited people thronging to the raised s
emiana
for the ceremony, though it was not terribly hard to keep track of a person with red hair in this particular crowd.

The music ceased as the mullah, the priest, entered. He read the wedding ceremony, rings were exchanged, and the couple joined by tying the ends of their shawls together. A glass of sugar water was passed to the bride and groom, and then around to the immediate audience of personal friends and family.

“Whatever you do, don't draw this,” Brian said as the dancers entered. They wore embroidered silks and muslins. In some ways, their dress was flowing and modest, not like a tight bodice, but the way they moved did all of the work for them.

“Oh, I promise,” Bingley whispered back. Each man brought his palms together at his chest and bowed to the passing Mulna as he sprinkled perfumed water on them.

As the bride and groom were ushered away, the festivities truly began, complete with fireworks that put to shame any of the regent's proud displays in Town. There was a man who seemed to swallow fire, but did not understand Bingley when he asked how he did it, the language barrier being too much or the entertainer not accustomed to being questioned.

The British were officers who had come because they never passed up a free meal. One of them, Kingston, was old and already retired from the military; he now worked as a translator. He claimed to have served under Wellington when he himself had been a colonel and Wellington a general. At that time, the gentleman who was now a duke had led the outnumbered British forces to storm the fortress of Gawilghur during the Anglo – Maratha War.

“He could inspire us to do anything,” said Kingston. “Even get ourselves killed. By God, he could do it with a single speech. I wonder whatever became of that man?”

Brian and Bingley shared a laugh as another guest showed them the correct way to smoke a hookah, not like “you bloody foreigners”—hold the pipe just right and do not exhale until the precise moment. They watched the man in a turban bigger than his head puff smoke in rings and were entranced. The mild buzz of tobacco was the only intoxicant there, because their host was religious and did not serve spirits. Instead, there were trays and trays of sweet cakes, bananas, fruits, and bread with honey.

“I would still give anything for a good plate of ribs,” Brian said in Japanese. Bingley understood the language adequately, thanks to three months of education on the boat, and they used it when they wanted to talk privately.

“I thought you were an Oriental,” Bingley said. Brian had not brought a single piece of English clothing in his trunks.

“An Oriental who would go for a cow right now,” he replied. “But don't translate that to this guy,” he said as a man in Hindu dress sat down. He had a bright red turban and a red dot on his head. He spoke only Hindi.

“‘The eye that spies,'” Bingley translated for Brian. “I think.”

“You mean ‘all-seeing.'”

“Maybe I do,” Bingley said, and then returned to his conversation with Shalok. “What? Yes, I have daughters—well, one of them is, the other is blonde, No, I will not sell the red-haired one! What, 5,000 rupees? No sale. Understand? No sale! Not selling!”

What Brian understood made him fall over sideways with laughter.

“When did I become the responsible one?” Brian said when they finally made it back to their guest house. It was now well into the morning, and the muezzins were already making their calls for prayer.
Prayer is better than sleep! God is great!

“Compared with that, my wedding was positively dull for the guests,” a sleepy-eyed but still hyperactive Bingley said. He had eaten a great deal of sugar that night, so he was still
quite
awake. He washed his face in the washbasin, scraping off the red body paint on his forehead. “It was fine for me—I honestly don't remember a thing.”

“I remember not understanding anything,” Brian said, removing his swords and carefully setting them on the cushions. “It was all in Russian, I think. Papist ceremony. And I thought,
What I would give to have Danny see
me
here—wearing a crown and marrying a princess.
”

Bingley lay down on his own bed. He was wearing an orange silk kurta that he used for both sleep and activity, something he found very convenient. “Darcy was at my wedding, but I don't think he was particularly paying attention to me.” He sighed in exhaustion. “Maybe we should do something with flowers and fireeaters for my daughters instead of a vicar going on and on about marriage and sin.”

“I'm sure Mrs. Bingley will take well to that.” Brian disappeared behind his screen and removed his
hakama,
letting his robe fall down. “And where are you going to get all those tiny flowers?”

“I suppose we'll have to start growing them when we get back. In ten years, they might be ready.”

“Ten years?”

“Something tells me Georgie isn't going to be begging me to go out, much less be eager to marry. Eliza, I don't know, but she's only ten, thank goodness.” He paused. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“You may.”

“How old is Her Highness?”

“Four and twenty.”

Bingley put a hand on his head. It was too early in the morning to be doing these calculations. “So when you were married her, she was—”

“Young, yes. Certainly not anything objectionable, but I am nearly two decades her senior.” He sighed. “I've never been good at planning. In fact, I think my entire life has been one happenstance after another.”

“Turned out fairly well anyway.”

“Still. It would not have been the safest bet. But then again, I was never any good at betting, which was what got me in trouble in the first place.”

Bingley laughed. “You should become a Muslim, then. They forbid gambling, so you wouldn't be tempted.”

“
And
spirits. No, I would not survive long without a good shot of whiskey, or maybe gin, or beer. I won't be sitting at the dinner table, drinking milk. Like a child.”

“I like milk.”

“My point exactly.”

CHAPTER 3