An expression of distaste crept over Jawahal’s face.
‘You were doing so well, Lieutenant. Don’t ruin it now.’
‘They’re dead,’ Peake repeated.
Jawahal shrugged and slowly nodded his head.
‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘You leave me no choice. But before you go, let me remind you that, when Kylian’s life was in your hands, you were incapable of saving her. She died because of men like you. But those men have gone. You are the last one. The future is mine.’
Peake raised his eyes to Jawahal, and as he did so, he noticed the man’s pupils narrowing into thin slits, his golden irises blazing. With painstaking elegance, Jawahal started to remove the glove on his right hand.
‘Unfortunately you won’t live to see it,’ Jawahal added. ‘Don’t think for a second that your heroic act has served any purpose. You’re an idiot, Lieutenant Peake. You always gave me that impression, and now all you have done is confirm it. I hope there is a hell reserved especially for idiots, Peake, because that’s where I’m sending you.’
Peake closed his eyes and listened to the hiss of fire just inches from his face. Then, after a moment that seemed eternal, he felt burning fingers closing round his throat, cutting off his very last breath. In the distance he could hear the sound of that accursed train and the ghostly voices of hundreds of children howling from the flames. After that, only darkness.
ONE BY ONE, ARYAMI Bose blew out the candles that lit up her sanctuary until only the hesitant glow of the fire remained, projecting fleeting haloes of light against the naked walls. The children were now asleep and the silence was broken only by the rain pattering against the closed shutters and the occasional crackling of the fire. Silent tears slid down Aryami’s face as she took the photograph of her daughter Kylian from the small brass and ivory box where she kept her most prized possessions.
A travelling photographer from Bombay had taken that picture some time before the wedding and hadn’t accepted any payment for it. It showed Kylian just as Aryami remembered her, with that uncanny luminosity that seemed to emanate from her. Kylian’s radiance had mesmerised all who knew her, just as it had captivated the expert eye of the photographer, who had given her the nickname by which she was still remembered: the Princess of Light.
Naturally, Kylian never became a true princess and had no kingdom other than the streets she grew up on. The day she left the Bose home to go and live with her husband, the people of Machuabazar had said farewell with tears in their eyes as they watched the white carriage carry away their Black Town princess for ever. She was scarcely more than a child at the time.
Aryami sat down next to the babies, facing the fireplace, and pressed the old photograph against her chest. Outside the storm raged on and Aryami drew on the force of its anger to help her decide what she should do next. Lieutenant Peake’s pursuer would not be content simply with killing him. The young man’s courage had earned her a few valuable minutes, which she could not waste, not even to mourn for her daughter. Experience had taught her that there would always be plenty of time to lament the errors of the past.
SHE PUT THE PHOTOGRAPH back into the box and took out a pendant she’d had made for Kylian years ago, a jewel she never had the chance to wear. It consisted of two gold circles, a sun and a moon, that fitted into one another to make a single piece. She pressed the centre of the pendant and the two parts separated. Aryami strung each half on a separate gold chain and put one round each of the babies’ necks.
As she did so, she considered the decisions she must make. There seemed to be only one way of ensuring the children’s survival: she must separate them and keep them apart, erase their past and hide their identity from the world and from themselves, however painful that might be. It was not possible for them to remain together; sooner or later they would give themselves away, and she could not take that risk. Aryami knew she had to resolve the dilemma before daybreak.
She took the babies in her arms and kissed them gently on the forehead. Their tiny hands stroked her face and fingered the tears that rolled down her cheeks. Both babies gurgled cheerfully at her, not understanding. She hugged them tight in her arms once more then placed them back in the improvised cot she had made for them.
She then lit a candle and took paper and pen. The future of her grandchildren was now in her hands. Taking a deep breath she began to write. In the background she could hear the rain easing off and the roar of the storm fading towards the north as an endless blanket of stars unfurled over Calcutta.
HAVING REACHED THE AGE of fifty, Thomas Carter thought that the city that had been his home for the last thirty-two years had no more surprises in store for him.
In the early hours of that morning in May 1916, after one of the fiercest monsoon storms he remembered, the surprise had arrived at the door of St Patrick’s Orphanage in the form of a basket containing a baby and a sealed letter marked personal and addressed to him.
The surprise was two-fold. Firstly, nobody bothered to abandon a baby in Calcutta on the doorstep of an orphanage, for there were plenty of alleyways, rubbish dumps and wells all over the city where it could be done more easily. Secondly, nobody wrote letters of introduction like the one he received, signed and leaving no doubt as to its author.
Carter examined his spectacles against the light, breathed on them, then wiped them with an old cotton handkerchief he used for the same task at least a dozen times a day – twice as much during the Indian summer.
The baby boy was asleep downstairs, in Vendela’s bedroom. The head nurse had been keeping a watchful eye on him since he’d been examined by Dr Woodward, who’d been dragged out of his bed shortly before dawn with no other explanation than a reminder of his Hippocratic oath.
The infant was essentially healthy. He showed some signs of dehydration but didn’t seem to be suffering from any of the catalogue of ills that cut short the lives of thousands of children, denying them the right even to reach the age when they’d be able to say their mothers’ name. The only things that had come with the child were the gold pendant in the shape of a sun that Carter held between his fingers, and the letter – a document which, were he to believe its content, placed him in a very awkward situation.
Carter put the pendant in the top drawer of his desk and turned the key. Then he picked up the letter and read it for at least the tenth time.
Dear Mr Carter,
I feel obliged to ask for your help in the most painful of circumstances, appealing to the friendship that I know united you and my late husband for over ten years. During that time my husband never ceased to praise your honesty and the extraordinary trust you inspired in him. That is why today I beg you to heed my plea with the greatest urgency, however strange it may seem, and if possible with the greatest secrecy.
The child I am obliged to hand over to you has lost both his parents. The murderer swore he would kill them and then wipe out their descendants. I cannot reveal the reasons that led this man to commit such an act, nor do I think it appropriate to do so. Suffice it to say that the discovery of the child should be kept secret. Under no circumstance should you inform the police or the British authorities, because the murderer has connections in both that would soon lead him to the boy.
For obvious reasons, I cannot raise the child myself without exposing him to the same fate that befell his parents. That is why I must beg you to take care of him, give him a name and educate him according to the principles of your institution, so that he grows up to be as honest and honourable as his parents were. And it is vitally important that the child should never learn the truth about his past.
I don’t have time to give you any more details, but I will remind you once more of the friendship and trust you shared with my husband in order to justify my request.
When you finish reading this letter, I beg you to destroy it, together with anything that might lead to the discovery of the child. I am sorry I cannot undertake this request in person, but the seriousness of the situation prevents me from doing so.
In the hope that you will make the right decision, please accept my eternal gratitude.