“Is she truly teasing me?” He sighed fondly. “No, Jane, we didn’t get on, but when he discovered that the Thornfield family was quite close to Sardar’s, and that loot flowed down our street like rain down a gutter, he began popping round uninvited.”
“That is how you and Mr. Singh and the other two British politicals all became acquainted?”
“Yes, and would the Director had sent the devil himself to Lahore first.” Mr. Thornfield’s face darkened, as if I could see the spiritual bruise beneath the sun-bronzed features. He shifted, seeming to steel himself, drawing a knee up to rest on the sofa beside me. “Did Sardar ever mention to you he had a sister?”
Oh, I thought, my heart breaking for them.
“Karman Kaur,” I replied, proud that I kept my voice steady.
Charles Thornfield’s lips wavered, but he did not shrink. “I knew her from the cradle, as she was my closest friend’s sibling and was always besting me at sword fighting. Sardar’s physiognomy has been hidden under that magnificent bush ever since he was old enough to grow one, that’s their custom—but you can guess at it, can’t you, and she looked very like him.”
“Brown skin, grey eyes, slender nose with a fine crook to it, full lower lip. Yes, I can see her.”
“I’m glad, Jane,” he said, equally low. “It was laughable how arresting she was. Karman was all fire and fight, and if she had been Maharani instead of Jindan Kaur,* tens of thousands of the Khalsa would be alive today, because she would have crushed any army who dared to say boo to her.”
“Mr. Singh implied that she was considerably more combative than he.”
“Wasn’t she just!” A smile died before it reached Mr. Thornfield’s lips. “But she had a soft side; deucedly handy with children, not to mention horses—you see where Sahjara caught the itch, at least that’s part of it—and a laugh that carried clear to Kandahar. Sardar always preferred studying the Guru to the chakkar; he just happens to be damnably talented. Karman, though—the three of us once forded all five rivers of the Punjab on horseback as a dare to ourselves, seeing as Ranjit Singh had managed it. Sardar was half a man by the end, I nearly drowned twice, but Karman? I think the daft girl wanted to do it again.”
“You loved her very much.”
“Not enough for her to notice,” came his answer. “But yes.”
A silence followed, one tempered by the whispering of the fire and the knowledge that outside, the sun was rising and the wind singing arias to the elms. Mr. Thornfield’s sadness must have been excruciating; but mine was strangely sweet for, though it pained me, the mere fact of the melancholy meant that he had taken me into his confidence, and so I wrapped myself in it all the tighter.
When I returned from my reverie, Mr. Thornfield was passing me another large glass of spirits. “To your health, Jane.”
“And yours, Mr. Thornfield.”
“Where to continue? Ah, David Lavell. The cur took a shine to Karman, because he had eyes in his head, and Karman took an equal shine to Lavell, thanks to that perverse rule of Nature which causes pearls to cast themselves before swine. As a female yourself, can you account for this oddity of science, Jane?”
“In some cases, it’s because the pearls know themselves grains of sand at heart, though I cannot imagine that should have been the case for Karman.”
Pained laughter escaped Mr. Thornfield’s chest. “No, her opinion of herself was middling favourable. Perhaps they shared that in common, and God knows that when it came to flattering the Sikhs, to the point of convincing ’em defeating the Company would only be a matter of three or four cavalry and half an hour’s botheration, Lavell was a master. From the moment they took up together, I was an object to be pitied, which is a state I do not care for.”
I remembered the cracked cloud cover of a London sky a few months after Clarke left me—brain pulsing fit to leak out my ears, covered in dew, observed by a silent beggar whose legs had been lost at the knees and had likewise slept rough in the park. “I understand.”
“It was piss on the wound that it was my own fault.” Mr. Thornfield took a hearty swallow. “The three of us had been inseparable—studying, shooting, riding out to the Jupindar rocks to drink French brandy filched from my parents and laugh until we were sick. I had assumed her mine already. I was a dunce, carousing with flighty houris* who meant nothing to me and then smoking bhang* with Sardar and Karman—they were family, and I expected it all to remain the same. After three months of pining, I announced to my parents that I meant to take up medicine and packed my bags for London.”