“Don’t touch me!”
We stared at each other, I in astonishment I had rebuffed him and he in chagrin he had startled me so. His thin grey gloves were covered with the other man’s gore, his shirt and waistcoat too, for he had been practicing his profession automatically, I believe, tending to the injured in spite of everything, and I was ready to splinter into a thousand mirror shards reflecting every memory of my own ugliness. Mr. Singh arrived bearing a mop and a bucket of soapy water and stopped, taking measure of the situation.
“Charles.” He passed his friend the cleaning supplies. “Miss Stone, will you let me walk beside you to the morning room?”
I started to speak, but clutched at his elbow rather than continue.
Mr. Singh ducked his cloth-bound head against my throbbing scalp in a glancing touch; Mr. Thornfield spread his arms as if in supplication, but since I could not speak, neither to protest the tainted innocence of accident nor beg forgiveness for guilt, I walked away. Mr. Singh accompanied me and, when we were in the morning room, I crossed to the divan and collapsed.
I could not see the shadow which tangled with mine as Sardar Singh hovered over me; I smelt him, though, warm nutmeg and the clean wintry sweat which accompanies a trek on horseback in January, and I fought not to weep at the strange comfort of it.
“Miss Stone, I am no doctor, but Charles will be here shortly, and in the meanwhile you’ve nothing whatsoever to fear. Are you injured in any sense we’re not aware of?”
“No.”
“Thank God for that, then,” he said as his footfalls grew fainter. “And thank God we were early in returning—we should have been here around midday tomorrow had we not been loath to leave the property unprotected.”
He knelt on the carpet before me with a glass of brandy when he returned; I swallowed it, and the searing of my bruised throat brought me back to myself. When I could focus, I saw that Mr. Singh regarded me as he might a casualty of a war he had started, and I did not think I could bear that expression.
“All this will pass,” said I, unsteadily.
“I am glad you think so.”
I wanted to elaborate—in this impossible future, I would not have just murdered yet another man, Sahjara would break mighty stallions, Mr. Thornfield would love me, and everyone would lose the look we had of folk waiting for the axe to fall.
“I think about many things that aren’t true, even say them sometimes,” I confessed instead, and his mouth tugged fathoms deep.
“Miss Stone, there is nothing I can do to relieve your pain over what just occurred. But I had a sister once, and in a way—in a very English way,” he amended, “you remind me of her. I don’t think that anyone who reminds me of my sister ought to feel so melancholy about herself, though I understand you must be in a state of extreme distress.”
You really cannot imagine what sort of state I am in.
“Did I kill him?”
“Yes,” said he.
I bit my lip, that sharp hurt dulling the ache in my chest. “Was your sister beautiful?”
Mr. Singh smiled. I have visited many churchyards, both as inspiration for gallows ballads and for perverse pleasure, and it was the smile I had found on the carved angels’ faces—peaceful but eroding.
“Indeed she was. Her name was Karman, and do you know, that sealed her fate, I think.”
“What does it mean?”
“‘Doer of deeds.’ Charles will never tell you this, but I was always a pacifist at heart. Oh, I am a skilled warrior, as is our honour and the will of God. But ‘Let compassion be your mosque,’ the Guru states, and if you were to discuss compassion with a Khalsa naik* today . . .” He shrugged.
I tucked my arm under my pulsating head. “But your sister was a fighter?”
“The great Maharajah Ranjit Singh would have been hard-pressed to win a battle with my sister,” Mr. Singh reflected. “Karman, from the time she was small, was wildly passionate. She loved the Khalsa in the new ways, with sharp swords and fat jewels and daring feats, whilst I loved it in the old ways, with meditation and acceptance. ‘Whom should I despise, since the one Lord made us all?’ If you were to have asked Karman, she would have spat, ‘The British and the Bengali strumpets who service them.’ Then she would have laughed and shouted, ‘Khalsa-ji!’ and you may have thought it merriment, but there was war in her eyes from the age of five, and later, men adored her for it. I did not blame them. I loved her before they did, after all.”
“You were a good brother to her.”
“Oh, yes,” he scoffed. “I taught her to fight with the tulwar, the chakkar, just as I did Charles, when I ought to have taught her meditation.”
“Did it grieve you, that you were so different?”
“A little—but people cannot help being who they are.”
“They can help the things they do because of who they are, however.”
“Are you merely shaken, or are you often distressed by who you are?” Mr. Singh inquired gently.