The Deceivers Read Free Page B

involved. George was nodding as though he understood perfectly; he probably did but William himself could only shake his head unhappily.
    In the background Mary straightened up under a shrill volley of congratulations from the voice inside the palanquin. A small brown hand, a-glitter with many rings, slipped through the gap in the curtain and gestured violently.
    The grooms led up the horses; George swung easily into the saddle; William cupped his hands between his knees, heaved Mary up, and mounted his own horse. The band straggled into place ahead of them, the leader shouted, ‘Ah!’ and with a tumultuous noise the procession started off.
    George rode a horse’s length ahead of the others, just behind the band. Chandra Sen, the patel, stepped delicately forward with long strides, the dust squirting up and over his open sandals. William and Mary rode behind him. Then came the palanquin, then the patel’s servants, then the tenant farmers.
    The road led through jungle so thick that the undergrowth threatened to strangle the trees. Flocks of green pigeons whirred up in alarm at the racket; monkeys swung from bough to bough among the recesses of the trees. William glanced at Mary; she rode with her lips slightly parted, and he thought she was looking anywhere but at George’s back ahead of her. He did not know what she was thinking about.
    She turned suddenly. ‘Isn’t this bizarre?’
    ‘What is?’ he said foolishly.
    ‘Oh, this. Bands are for big streets, big parades, not for marching, through a jungle with so few of us here, and no spectators.’
    He considered what she had said. ‘There’s us, dear.’
    She laughed. ‘My dear, literal husband, I love you . . . husband . . . husband.’ She spoke the word louder each time, as if there were magic in it, and so loud that George must have heard even over the tumult of the band.
    She went on, shouting to make herself heard, ‘This Eastern music is fascinating, weird. Do you know if this tune they’re playing has a name?’
    ‘Yes. “Rule, Britannia.” ‘
    She choked, catching her hand to her face and spluttering. William was puzzled. The bandsmen weren’t playing very well, but they were doing their best. Perhaps he too wouldn’t have recognized the tune if he had not heard bands like this one play it so often. He did not see anything particularly funny about it though.
    The road forked, and the bandsmen shuffled to a halt while two servants ran up with Chandra Sen’s horse and helped him into the saddle. ‘Now, sahib,’ he said to George, ‘it is fitting that I ride, for I am on my own land.’
    The side track curved sharply off to the right. After a mile the forest began to thin out, small fields ate into it, then the fields grew together and lonely hovels dotted them, and the trail came into the open. The village of Padwa stood on a little knoll ahead, raised above the level of the September floods. Wild plum, peepul, and tamarind trees surrounded it; the sun shone down on thatch and tile, on the broad brown acres and the green carpets of jungle. William fidgeted in the saddle and knotted his right hand against his thigh. What extra value, or importance, did a parchment scroll place on a man who owned this?
    The village did not contain many houses, but they were all in good repair, grouped tidily around Chandra Sen’s own house, a large two-storeyed building of white-painted brick with a tiled red roof. The other houses were made of earth and cow dung and straw. The living quarters of Chandra Sen’s house occupied the upper storey, which was reached by a flight of wooden steps. The ground level was walled only at the back; cows and carts and piles of straw could be seen among the wooden uprights supporting the upper storey. A deep courtyard, stone paved and surrounded by a low dry-stone wall, extended back from the street to the house.
    Most of the men of the village were already in the patel’s procession. The women stood in the doorways of the