The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy Read Free Page A

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.
    â€œâ€¦to get in there.”
    He removed the ramrod, brought the rifle to his right shoulder, and fired high into the sky.
    â€œPerfect!” Mahmud clapped with delight. He stood up and clasped his hands together. “I am grateful to you, Mr. Bingali.”
    â€œIt’s no trouble,” Bingley said, handing the rifle back to him.
    â€œNo, 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