The Strangler Vine (6 page)

Nungoo was older, quiet, with a broad flat face, long moustaches and skin dark as treacle. His arms seemed to emerge from the front of his shoulders, which made his back look almost hunched, but he was extremely strong and very methodical. He reprimanded Sameer now and again, I noted, but also took a certain care in him. Both men, like Mir Aziz, were Mahommedans and so not constrained by the caste rules that bound Hindoos to certain tasks. Like him, their roles were not precisely stated: they were neither quite servants nor sepoys – though they had both served in the Company’s army – but rather something in between. They rode extremely well, and
carried swords and muskets. Nungoo cooked for us. Sameer saw to the horses and for a few coins washed my clothes.

That fourth night we finally spent under a roof. Not in a
dak bungalow
– his lordship would not have that – but a native caravanserai, a kind of circular walled cloister entered through a large gate, where each section of cloistered wall was a small room with a wooden door. Mr Blake greeted one or two natives, then went to speak to the woman who ran the cook-shop at the gate. He seized her hand and she cried out and laughed a deep guttural laugh when she saw him. I was surprised, since very few Europeans ever elected to stay in such places, but within minutes our wet clothes were being dried round the hearth, and bowls of curry, rice and small fried cakes were produced. In the yard in the middle of the caravanserai business was contracted, and natives tended camels, loaded bales and took on new grooms. At the edges, high-caste Hindoos cooked their suppers over open fires, and merchants and horse dealers moved from one shadowed cloistered room to the next, muttering and arguing. I sat at the entrance of our straw-filled room with my copy of Mountstuart’s
The Courage of the Bruce
, while Blake played knucklebones with the merchants, several of whom he clearly knew, occasionally issuing a loud belch. I knew I was unmistakeable in my uniform, and I fancied the natives went more slowly and watchfully about their business. I was sure my appearance annoyed Mr Blake, and I was glad that it did. The presence of a lumpy charpai gave me reason to rejoice and, despite the constant burble and the savaging of insects, I lapsed into unconsciousness for a few hours.

For the next week we woke at four while it was still cool, riding five or six hours to cover the required distance of thirty to forty miles, changing our ponies every few days, resting when we could in the afternoons. Though we passed empty white dak bungalows, Blake never allowed us to stay in one. Instead nights were passed in the now noxious-smelling tents. The heat was still thick and exhausting, but the rain was dwindling and the mud was less onerous and the travelling less hard. And despite the exasperations, I found that after months of lethargy the change of air and the activity elevated my spirits. I did not cease to mourn poor Macpherson, but the longing for home
came less painfully, and other thoughts began to supplant it. I determined that I would do all that was asked of me, and everything in my power to try to make our journey a success. I would show no fatigue, I would not complain – though occasionally I would gripe to myself that I was obliged to undertake chores that no European would normally perform, in conditions that no European would normally have to undergo, that my sores were starting to fester, that I could not abide the food and that the insects kept me from sleeping. I would observe Jeremiah Blake and note my observations, and whatever happened I would do my duty. I found these thoughts comforting.

The road was not yet as busy as it would become once the rains stopped for good, but it was already a full day’s entertainment in itself. There were frenzied ash-smeared fakirs who gambolled grotesquely and stuck their palms out for money; women wrapped in layers of cottons – saffron, pink, blue – with babes on their hips and dull brass bracelets tinkling; small insolent boys chewing sugar cane. There were jugglers with families of monkeys in their turbans; wealthy Sikhs in yellow silk waistcoats with enormous beards and huge
dastars
, leading columns of camels and carts; wedding parties in red and silver, with painted elephants, encircled by the scent of jasmine; and carts of dull-eyed, ragged indentured servants.

As for us, it is impossible to overstate what an odd, un-European picture we made: a small, lamentably unkempt party, travelling faster than anything but the camel
sowars
delivering messages up the road. Occasionally we would pass an English civilian or officer followed by the usual eight carts of possessions and twenty or thirty servants, covering their eight miles a day, with perhaps a wife and children carried in two palanquins, all complaining bitterly. I began to dream of travelling with a tent so large and luxurious that it required its own bullock cart, my tripod basin, eau de cologne and Windsor soap, and a full complement of servants including my own cook, laundryman and barber.

By night, we’d take turns to watch for thieves and dacoits, but not Thugs. Mir Aziz said one rarely heard of them now. Even in earlier times, they had never plied the busy routes but haunted the more
remote places where there was jangal into which to vanish, and they had never attacked Europeans. We were all armed – Mir Aziz always wore an ammunition belt across one shoulder, and a tulwar, which he sheathed in a beautiful and very distinctive black leather scabbard stitched with silver.

What did not change was that Mr Blake remained an utter enigma. He kept his own council, never imparted his thoughts and showed, as far as I could tell, absolutely no interest in Xavier Mountstuart. By day, he was always out in front, his straight back an unmistakeable marker of a former soldier. At night, by our fire, he might take out a small, thick leather-bound book and read from it; or he would bring out a small
huqqa
and suck impassively, staring into the fire. Though he sometimes looked near-feverish with fatigue, he never acknowledged it as far as I could tell. Despite his commonness he did have a quality that commanded our natives’ respect. In other circumstances I might have tried again with him or even forced my conversation upon him out of sheer mischief. But there was something powerfully self-contained about him that repelled inquiry. I considered asking Mir Aziz what he knew about him, but I was reluctant to expose both my ignorance and my curiosity. I tried to imagine his life in Calcutta with his
bibi
, the native woman who had died. I could not picture him surrounded by friends or a family, or that dreary broken-down house in better days. I could see no sign of the ‘bloodhound’ described by Colonel Buchanan. I did not hear him inquire of a single European we encountered if they had seen Mountstuart – not an unreasonable question about the most famous man in India. Instead, at each town or station he and Mir Aziz would disappear for an hour or two. Whether he knew of my own admiration for Mountstuart I had no idea. I found the thought that he had known the poet abhorrent. As a result I took to searching out a British officer in each place to inquire whether they had seen Mountstuart. None had. There seemed to be no trace of him.

In those hours when we rode and there was little to see, or when I tried to rest and sleep would not come, I deliberately turned my
thoughts from Frank to Mountstuart and the Thugs. What I knew about their practices – ‘Thuggee’ – had come both from the drawing-rooms of Calcutta, and Major William Sleeman’s history of the Thugs and their customs, which I had read after I had arrived in Calcutta. ‘Thuggee’ Sleeman was the Company officer who had done most to capture and destroy the Thug gangs. The headquarters of his campaign, Jubbulpore, was our destination. It was in the Thug heartland, the old anarchic Maratha states, taken over by the Company in 1819. Since the late 1820s William Sleeman, in a campaign of extraordinary brilliance and relentlessness, had pursued and all but stamped out the Thugs, making the roads of India safe for native travellers.

Through the dry season the Thugs walked those roads, posing as innocent travellers, befriending other wayfarers. They would begin in small bands of ten or twelve, up to thirty, but might combine until they numbered over a hundred, for they were too cowardly ever to attack unless they well outnumbered their victims. They would cover hundreds of miles, choosing their quarry, then employing disguises to ensnare them, depending on their caste or religion. They might play poor pilgrims or a group of sepoys on leave or a raja’s policeman with his servants, or a caravan of merchants. It was the task of the Thug inveigler or deceiver – the incarnation of fair face and foul intention – to charm the victims. Often he would be the
jemadar
, the chief of the band. He might sing, tell tales or recite poetry. The best inveiglers made women fall in love with them and convinced the most intransigent merchant, high-caste Brahmin or proud Sikh to sit at their fire. Often the inveiglers would suggest it would be safer to travel in a group for fear of dacoits or Thugs.

The band might spend a day or weeks charming their victims until they were entirely trusted. Then, one night as they all sat together, at a pre-ordained moment, the Thug leader would make a sign. Behind each innocent a strangler, a
bhurtote
, would be standing ready to throw his
rumal
– the long knotted orange scarf with which he choked out life – around the victim’s neck. Next to each there would be two hand-holders whose job it was to prevent the victim
from pulling off the scarf. The murders were, according to Sleeman, executed with great skill and precision – the Thugs prided themselves on how quickly and silently they worked. Men, women and children were murdered without compunction for no one could be left alive to tell their secret, though occasionally they would save a small child and bring it up as their own, training it in Thuggee later. There were Thugs whose parents had been victims of their own methods, and it was said these men accepted this with the calm fatalism that is one of the most perplexing qualities of Hindooism.

The most horrible aspect of Thuggee, however, was that the Thugs justified their murders as acts of devotion to Kali. She was the reason they plied their monstrous trade. They said she ordered them to. Their victims were offerings to the goddess, who delighted in blood. I had read that each gang carried a pickaxe sacred to her, with which they dug their victims’ graves, and that each Thug underwent an initiation of eating fresh sugar cane called
goor
. The Thugs said the
goor
changed their natures for ever. It gave them the blood lust which made it possible for them to perform their murders, and each time they planned to kill, they would consume it again. They claimed not to be accountable for their actions, as they were merely the goddess’s instruments. The fruit of their murders, the victims’ possessions, were their reward for doing the goddess’s bidding.

And yet one could tell that Sleeman had some sympathy for the Thugs he had captured. He had interviewed them and studied them at length, and his book described their customs, habits and their thoughts of what drove them. One Thug in particular, Feringhea, had particularly captured his imagination. Sleeman had persuaded him to become an informer, an Approver, and he had told the Major his life story. Though he had killed hundreds without compunction, he was in his way a remarkable character: he was passionately fond of his family, a fine neighbour, brilliant at executing his ruses, true to his monstrous beliefs, and yet trapped in his belief that he was slave to the
goor
, undone by the loss of his moral compass. I could, when I considered it, see how Xavier Mountstuart would think the Thugs might make a fine subject for a great poem.

The further we left Calcutta behind, the wilder and hillier and more forested the landscape became. On the road tall trees gave shade, and on several afternoons we heard growls from the forest. Mir Aziz said they were tigers, calling from the right side of the road, and that this was a good omen. On certain afternoons when time permitted, I would walk into the forest to shoot partridge and pigeons which Nungoo cooked for me – he would not eat them himself on account of them not being killed in the correct manner for a Musselman. We passed Hazaribagh, the ‘city of a thousand tigers’, where the land began to rise. Outside Ranachitty, where the views from atop the hills down at the thickly forested valleys reminded me of England, we saw a tiger asleep on the road. When I lifted my musket to take a shot, Mir Aziz pushed it away and Mr Blake barked in Hindoostanee.

‘Tiger in the road is being very good luck,’ said Mir Aziz. ‘Bad luck to kill.’ He glanced at Blake. ‘Blake Sahib is saying most tiger is not dangerous, no, not at all.’ I put my gun away, grumpily, wondering if I would ever have another chance. The commotion, meanwhile, had roused the creature, which in one fluid movement rose, stared at us insolently and strolled languidly into the undergrowth where it was immediately swallowed by the shadows.

After nine days we came to the city of Sahseram, a place of old, decaying, pink-stone buildings. It had been, Mir Aziz said, the capital of the Emperor Sher Shah Suri, who had built the great road north and was buried here. By the side of the road there were many low round mounds,
suttee
graves, in which were buried Hindoo widows who had immolated themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Mr Blake had business, Mir Aziz told me, and I was free for the afternoon. I found myself alone with the Company civilian who had authorized our change of mounts – a short, somewhat nervous fellow who reminded me of nothing so much as a mild but anxious vicar, but who kindly invited me to pass the night at his home. The prospect of a night in the flea-filled straw of a caravanserai was not appealing, and I immediately accepted.

‘Did you hear at all whether Xavier Mountstuart passed this way a few months ago?’ I asked him.

‘Xavier Mountstuart? Good heavens, is he supposed to have done?’ The thought made him frown. ‘
From what torrid waters, from what darkling caverns cometh thee, great giving mother Ganges?
Goodness me! What on earth could he want with Sahseram? No. No. I think it very unlikely that I should not have heard of it.’ It was the same answer I had encountered all the way up the road.